Detailed Description of Neuromorphometrics’ Services

Morphology is the study of form or structure. "Neuromorphometrics" refers to the quantitative measurement the structure of the nervous system. Segmentation is the main and most difficult step in the neuromorphometric analysis of magnetic resonance brain images. As used here, "segmentation" means the delineation of neuroanatomical structures, with outlines of brain structures drawn on images to indicate the extents of those structures as shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4 - Segmentation a) raw image, b) general segmentation, and c) subcortical gray matter parcellation (computational subdivision of the diencephalon, putamen, pallidum and caudate).

After each slice in the scan has been segmented, the location, volume, extent and shape are examined for each specific neuroanatomical structure. A morphometric analysis in conjunction with neuropsychological, neurological, and psychiatric observations, or coupled with functional neuroimaging (fMRI) is then used to aid in answering broad classes of questions about brain structure and function for both normal subjects and patient populations.

This type of analysis has been studied for more than two decades, and as seen in the literature, quantitative measurements of the structure of the living human brain have been found to be useful in the understanding of brain development, diseases, and injury. However, these studies often involve small numbers of subjects (10 to 50) and limited brain regions (1 to 3) because the analysis is difficult and time consuming to perform.

In order for a technician to achieve sufficient precision, months of training are required and the analysis of each brain scan involves many hours of detailed work. Parts of this task have been automated, but complete automation is still a research area. While the results of these studies demonstrate the importance of applying neuromorphometric techniques, they are often conflicting or incomplete. To fully evaluate the uses and applicability of the field of neuromorphometrics, whole-brain comprehensive segmentation and parcellations need to be done using data from large numbers of subjects, and the results correlated with the state of a disease. For instance, a thorough study of neural atrophy in Alzheimer's Disease patients should uncover the measurements that are necessary for both early diagnosis and also highly precise assessment of disease progression.

At Neuromorphometrics, our results are produced using manually guided automation and a neuroanatomical expert inspects every detail so that what we provide is precise, accurate, reproducible and reliable. Our procedures are scripted to ensure data integrity, adherence to established procedures and to provide documentation for audits. For each application we develop, a manual analysis bootstraps the automated analysis. All software and methods are tailored to each project to achieve the highest quality results. Our emphasis is on developing specific applications of neuromorphometric analyses instead of on creating a general toolkit or a one-size-fits-all automated method. That is where we believe the real money is. We believe that it takes this type of attention to specific detail to create a realistic solution to a particular problem because measuring brains is tedious and difficult.

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