Comparison of cerebral atrophy grade with sizes of lateral ventricle and central sulci

Cerebral atrophy, which can be detected as ventricular enlargement or sulcal widening on magnetic resonance images, is one of the risk factors of dementia characterized as progressive impairment of memory and intellectual function beyond normal aging. To this end, the agreement between cerebral atrophy grade and the size (length and width) of lateral ventricles and central sulci is explored in this study. Atrophy grading is realized visually by a group of experts on magnetic resonance imaging data of 20 subjects with complaints of memory or cognitive ability. Whereas the latter is measured automatically and manually on the same data using image processing techniques. Results show that agreement with atrophy is more pronounced for lateral ventricle than central sulcus, and for the width than the length of both structures. Finally, both automated and manual measurements of lateral ventricle width show high agreement (around 0.9) with atrophy grades. Key Words: brain atrophy, expert grading, lateral ventricle, central sulcus, segmentation, automatic size measurement, correlation analysis.