Joint Analysis of Cortical Area and Thickness as a Replacement for the Analysis of the Volume of the Cerebral Cortex

Anderson M Winkler; Douglas N Greve; Knut J Bjuland; Thomas E Nichols; Mert R Sabuncu; Asta K Håberg; Jon Skranes; Lars M Rimol

doi:10.1093/cercor/bhx308

Joint Analysis of Cortical Area and Thickness as a Replacement for the Analysis of the Volume of the Cerebral Cortex

Cereb Cortex. 2018 Feb 1;28(2):738-749. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhx308.

Authors

Anderson M Winkler^{1

2

3}, Douglas N Greve⁴, Knut J Bjuland⁵, Thomas E Nichols^{1

6}, Mert R Sabuncu⁷, Asta K Håberg^{8

9}, Jon Skranes^{5

10}, Lars M Rimol^{5

11}

Affiliations

¹ Oxford Centre for Functional MRI of the Brain, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford, Oxford OX3 9DU, UK.
² Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT 06511, USA.
³ Big Data Analytics Group, Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein, São Paulo, SP 05652-900, Brazil.
⁴ Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital/ Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, MA 02129, USA.
⁵ Department of Laboratory Medicine, Children's and Women's Health, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim 7030, Norway.
⁶ Oxford Big Data Institute, Li Ka Shing Centre for Health Information and Discovery, Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford, Oxford OX3 7LF, UK.
⁷ School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Meinig School of Biomedical Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA.
⁸ Department of Neuroscience, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim 7030, Norway.
⁹ Department of Radiology, St. Olav's Hospital, Trondheim University Hospital, Trondheim 7030, Norway.
¹⁰ Department of Pediatrics, Sørlandet Hospital, 4838 Arendal, Norway.
¹¹ Norwegian Advisory Unit for Functional MRI, Department of Radiology, St. Olav's University Hospital, Trondheim 7006, Norway.

Abstract

Cortical surface area is an increasingly used brain morphology metric that is ontogenetically and phylogenetically distinct from cortical thickness and offers a separate index of neurodevelopment and disease. However, the various existing methods for assessment of cortical surface area from magnetic resonance images have never been systematically compared. We show that the surface area method implemented in FreeSurfer corresponds closely to the exact, but computationally more demanding, mass-conservative (pycnophylactic) method, provided that images are smoothed. Thus, the data produced by this method can be interpreted as estimates of cortical surface area, as opposed to areal expansion. In addition, focusing on the joint analysis of thickness and area, we compare an improved, analytic method for measuring cortical volume to a permutation-based nonparametric combination (NPC) method. We use the methods to analyze area, thickness and volume in young adults born preterm with very low birth weight, and show that NPC analysis is a more sensitive option for studying joint effects on area and thickness, giving equal weight to variation in both of these 2 morphological features.

Keywords: cortical gray matter volume; cortical surface area; cortical thickness; nonparametric combination.

Publication types

Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Adult
Cerebral Cortex / diagnostic imaging*
Cerebral Cortex / physiology*
Female
Humans
Infant, Very Low Birth Weight / physiology*
Magnetic Resonance Imaging / methods*
Male
Organ Size / physiology

Abstract

Publication types

MeSH terms

Grants and funding