An MRI study of structural variations in schizophrenia using deformation field morphometry

Yoon, Uicheul; Lee, Jong-Min; Kwon, Jun Soo; Kim, Hyun-Pil; Shin, Yong-Wook; Ha, Tae Hyon; Kim, In Young; Chang, Kee-Hyun; Kim, Sun I.

doi:10.1016/j.pscychresns.2005.12.005

« Previous Next »Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging
Volume 146, Issue 2 , Pages 171-177, 31 March 2006

An MRI study of structural variations in schizophrenia using deformation field morphometry

Uicheul Yoon
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, Hanyang University, Sungdong P.O. Box 55, Seoul, 133-605, Korea
Jong-Min Lee
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, Hanyang University, Sungdong P.O. Box 55, Seoul, 133-605, Korea
- Corresponding author. Tel.: +82 2 2220 0685; fax: +82 2 2296 5943.
Jun Soo Kwon
- Department of Psychiatry, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea
Hyun-Pil Kim
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, Hanyang University, Sungdong P.O. Box 55, Seoul, 133-605, Korea
Yong-Wook Shin
- Department of Psychiatry, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea
Tae Hyon Ha
- Department of Psychiatry, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea
In Young Kim
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, Hanyang University, Sungdong P.O. Box 55, Seoul, 133-605, Korea
Kee-Hyun Chang
- Department of Radiology, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea
Sun I. Kim
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, Hanyang University, Sungdong P.O. Box 55, Seoul, 133-605, Korea

Received 21 September 2005; received in revised form 6 December 2005; accepted 14 December 2005.

Abstract

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has an important role in investigating the changes in brain structure that are associated with schizophrenia. In this study, MRI scans of patients diagnosed with schizophrenia (37 males; 19 females; 17–42 years of age) were compared with those of an age- and sex-matched group of normal subjects (37 males; 19 females; 18–40 years of age). Based on the images of the healthy control subjects, we constructed a representative average brain template. Automated image analysis techniques were used to measure differences in the regional nonlinear deformation fields between the two groups. A deformation field, which measures the spatial transformation to deform a template of brain anatomy to each individual data, was obtained as a three-dimensional displacement vector in each voxel. There was a significantly greater magnitude of the deformation fields in the superior frontal and parietal lobes as well as in the cingulate gyrus connecting both lobes of the patients with schizophrenia than in those of healthy controls, suggesting that these cerebral regions have a significantly higher structural variability in schizophrenia.

Keywords: Schizophrenia, Magnetic resonance imaging, Average template, Deformation fields, Structural variations