Abstract
Our goal was to determine the influence of sex, age and the head/brain size on the compartmental brain volumes in the radiologically verified healthy population (96 subjects; 54 women and 42 men) from the Upper Silesia region in Poland. The MRI examinations were done using 3T Philips Achieva with the same T1-weighted and T2-weighted protocols. The image segmentation procedures were performed with SPM (Statistical Parameter Mapping) and FSL-FIRST software. The volumes of 14 subcortical structures for the left and right hemispheres and 4 overall volumes were calculated. The General Linear Models (GLM) analysis was used with and without the Total Brain Volume (TBV) and Intracranial Volume (ICV) parameters as the covariates to study the regional vs. global brain atrophy. After the ICV/TBV adjustments, the majority of sex differences in the specific volumes of interest (VOIs) revealed to be linked to the difference in the head/brain size parameters. The analysis also confirmed the significant effect of the aging process on the brain loss. After the TBV adjustment, the age- and sex-related volumetric trends for the gray and white matter volumes were observed: the negative age dependence of the gray matter volume is more pronounced in the males, while in case of the white matter the positive age-related trend in the female group is weaker. The local losses of the left caudate nucleus and the right thalamus are more advanced than the global brain atrophy. Different head-size correction strategies are not interchangeable and may yield various volumetric results, but when used together, facilitate studies on the regional dependencies inherent to a healthy, but aging, brain.
Highlights
Advanced imaging methods development, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), allows for brain exploration
With the advent of magnetic resonance imaging, the intracranial volume (ICV) or total brain volume (TBV) have become frequently used as the measures of the brain size to correct for individual variability in the MRI based morphometric studies (Nordenskjöld et al, 2015)
The Total Brain Volume (TBV)/Intracranial Volume (ICV) adjustment was performed on a group level, and the normalization parameters were included as the covariates in the statistical analysis
Summary
Advanced imaging methods development, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), allows for brain exploration. Before MRI, post-mortem examinations were the only approach to studying the differences in brain structural characteristics. Volumetric Brain Analyses using the anatomical MRI reference images combined into templates. These digital templates reveal the differences in environmental, phenotypic, genetic and developmental factors, overall brain features such as brain shape, size and volume vary across different populations (Gogtay and Thompson, 2010; Sivaswamy et al, 2019). The shape and size of human brains may vary across the racial groups, as reveals from the comparisons of the MRI templates obtained for various populations (Xie et al, 2015; Rao et al, 2017). Inconsistency of the reported morphometric findings may, reflect the variable extent to which the above methodological issues vary regarding sample
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