MRI Based Cortical Thickness Analysis Of Alzheimer's Disease

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disorder characterized by a progressive impairment of cognitive function and atrophy of cerebral cortex. Doing investigation on the structure changes of cerebral cortex in AD and its prodromal mild cognitive impairment (MCI) could provides good insights into the mechanism of onset and progression of this disease and be of great help for its early clinical diagnosis. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) gives the chance to do such research on pattern of changes in cerebral cortical thickness. The purpose of this study is to analyze the brain structure of AD and MCI images on MRI in the image domain.First, based on the population, this study investigated longitudinal changes of the cortical thickness of AD and MCI patients. The regions that have atrophies are mainly those in default mode network (DMN) which is considered to be associated with the cognitive function and memory.Second, the association study of cortical thickness with the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers, involving Abl-42, Tau and P-Tau protein and the Mini-Mental State Exam (MMSE) scores was performed. The cortical thickness has significant correlation with the biomarker level and the MMSE scores, which suggests that the cortical thickness could be imaging biomarker for the diagnosis of the AD.Finally, the graph theory was applied to the analysis of the brain structure and the structure network of the cortical thickness was constructed. The properties of the cortical thickness network have great discrepancies among AD, MCI and Normal Control. This findings could make the analysis of AD brain images using pattern classification methods be possible.