View source for Comparative Morphological Analysis of Brain Structures


== People ==

* Darwin Martinez
* Hugo Franco
* Francisco Gómez

== Summary ==

Commonly, brain injuries in these patients are followed by complex physiological processes that can lead to inflammations and neuronal and axonal death, all of which contribute to dramatic changes in local and global morphological brain properties (Graham et al., 2005).  Dissorder of Consciousness patients (DOC) usually present macrostructural lesions (Graham et al., 2005; Sidaros et al., 2009) that will locally change the geometrical brain conﬁguration (Graham et al., 2005). Typical structures involved in these degenerative processes include: thalami and white matter. The characterization of the structural changes in these patients is usually computed in a local way by focusing on local geometric changes intra-structure. Nevertheless, it will be expected that these local variations may also change spatial relationships among different cortical and subcortical structures.

In this work, we hypothesized that a proper characterization of the morphological changes, accounting for both intra-structure and inter-structure, will help to characterize morphological changes linked to altered states of consciousness. To test this hypothesis, we developed a novel structural brain characterization based on the distribution of distances among voxels in different brain regions. This distribution accounts for both local geometrical properties, such as, size and region shape, but also distance relationships between different brain regions. We tested the proposed biomarker for the characterization of structural alterations between left and right thalamus, two structures where structural damage maybe expected in these patients. Using the proposed feature we obtained significant differences in the distance distribution for the discrimination between healthy controls to DOC patients.

== Method overview ==

== Datasets ==
* [[Disorders of consciousness dataset]]: Coma Science Group (U. de Liège)
* [[Preterm birth dataset]]: Canguro program (Imagine research group - Colombia)

== Results (Expected) ==

* Clinical conference. Morphological changes on dissorder of conscioussness patients.
* Method conference. Initial method description and case study.
* Journal article. Robust experimental study and application to clinical data.

== References ==

* D. Graham, J. Adams, L. Murray, and B. Jennett. Neuropathology of the vegetative state after head injury. Neuropsychological Rehabilitation, 15(3-4):198–213, 2005.

* A. Sidaros, M. Liptrot A. Skimminge, A. Engberg K. Sidaros, M. Herning, O. Paulson, T. Jernigan, and E Rostrup. Long-term global and regional brain volume changes following severe traumatic brain injury: a longitudinal study with clinical correlates. NeuroImage, 44(1):1–8, 2009.