Accurate measurement of brain changes in longitudinal MRI scans using tensor-based morphometry

Xue Hua; Boris Gutman; Christina P Boyle; Priya Rajagopalan; Alex D Leow; Igor Yanovsky; Anand R Kumar; Arthur W Toga; Clifford R Jack Jr; Norbert Schuff; Gene E Alexander; Kewei Chen; Eric M Reiman; Michael W Weiner; Paul M Thompson; Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative

doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2011.01.079

Accurate measurement of brain changes in longitudinal MRI scans using tensor-based morphometry

Neuroimage. 2011 Jul 1;57(1):5-14. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2011.01.079. Epub 2011 Feb 23.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, Dept. of Neurology, UCLA School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
² Dept. of Psychiatry, University of Illinois-Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA; Dept. of Bioengineering, University of Illinois-Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA; Community Psychiatry Associates, Sacramento, CA, USA.
³ Dept. of Bioengineering, University of Illinois-Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.
⁴ Dept. of Radiology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, USA.
⁵ Dept. of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, UCSF, San Francisco, CA, USA; Dept. of Medicine, UCSF, San Francisco, CA, USA.
⁶ Dept. Psychology and Evelyn F. McKnight Brain Institute, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA.
⁷ Banner Alzheimer's Institute and Banner Good Samaritan PET Center, Phoenix, AZ, USA; Dept. of Mathematics and Statistics, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA.
⁸ Banner Alzheimer's Institute and Banner Good Samaritan PET Center, Phoenix, AZ, USA; Dept. Psychiatry, University of Arizona, Phoenix, AZ, USA; Neurogenomics Division, Translational Genomics Research Institute and Arizona Alzheimer's Consortium, AZ, USA.
⁹ Dept. of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, UCSF, San Francisco, CA, USA; Dept. of Medicine, UCSF, San Francisco, CA, USA; Dept. of Psychiatry, UCSF, San Francisco, CA, USA.
¹⁰ Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, Dept. of Neurology, UCLA School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA, USA. Electronic address: thompson@loni.ucla.edu.

Abstract

This paper responds to Thompson and Holland (2011), who challenged our tensor-based morphometry (TBM) method for estimating rates of brain changes in serial MRI from 431 subjects scanned every 6 months, for 2 years. Thompson and Holland noted an unexplained jump in our atrophy rate estimates: an offset between 0 and 6 months that may bias clinical trial power calculations. We identified why this jump occurs and propose a solution. By enforcing inverse-consistency in our TBM method, the offset dropped from 1.4% to 0.28%, giving plausible anatomical trajectories. Transitivity error accounted for the minimal remaining offset. Drug trial sample size estimates with the revised TBM-derived metrics are highly competitive with other methods, though higher than previously reported sample size estimates by a factor of 1.6 to 2.4. Importantly, estimates are far below those given in the critique. To demonstrate a 25% slowing of atrophic rates with 80% power, 62 AD and 129 MCI subjects would be required for a 2-year trial, and 91 AD and 192 MCI subjects for a 1-year trial.

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