Use of MRI to Measure Whole Brain Atrophy in MS Patients

Nowadays magnetic resonance imaging is used for anatomical assessment of human brain structures in neurodegenerative disorders causing brain atrophy for instance in multiple sclerosis (MS) or in Alzheimer Disease. Pathological brain tissue loss can be described in terms of change in the brain parenchymal fraction (BPF). This work shows the impact of segmentation method in SPM12 and additional segmentation in Computational Anatomy Toolbox (CAT12) on calculated BPF value for patients suffer from with MS no treated and treated with disease-modifying drug (DMD) interferon-beta (INFb) for one year and two years. Both methods confirm that brain parenchymal fraction decreases with age, nevertheless for patients not treated INFb decreases faster than for treated. An usability of Lesion Segmentation Tool toolbox in process of automatic detection and segmentation T₂ hyperintense lesions in FLAIR images is discussed.