Coherence of Hippoeampal Volume Measurement Using Freesurfer and Voxel Based Measurement Segmentation / 中国医学影像学杂志

ABSTRACT

Purpose To explore an automatic measurement method to replace the manual segmentation of hippocampal volume and brain structure by comparing the relevance and consistency between Freesurfer,as well as voxel based morphometry software (VBM8),and manual measurement of hippocampal volume,respectively.Materials and Methods Totally 67 young subjects (aged 20-40 years) and 75 elderly subjects (aged 60-80 years) were collected separately.After the whole brain MRI scan,the volume of the hippocampus was obtained by manual segmentation,importing to Freesurfer and VBM8 software respectively.Pearson correlation analysis and intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) were used to statistically analyze the correlation of Freesurfer and VBM with manual measurement.Meanwhile,Bland-Altman scatter plot was used to reflect the consistency.Results Freesurfer and VBM were both highly related with manual measurement.The left and right r values of Freesurfer and VBM were 0.633,0.679 and 0.666,0.703,respectively in the young group,and 0.627,0.765 and 0.663,0.708,respectively in the elderly group;while ICC results showed an obvious difference.The value measured by Freesurfer in young group (ICC=0.377,0.502) was larger than that in the elderly group (ICC=0.307,0.459).However,on the whole,ICC VBM was larger than ICC Freesurfer and right hippocampal volume was larger than left one.The Bland-Altman diagram showed that the consistency of VBM with manual measurement was better than that of Freesurfer.Conclusion Freesurfer can be applied locally on the measurement of hippocampal volume in young subjects.VBM is more accurate than Freesurfer in replacing manual segmentation for measurement of adult hippocampal volume and for volume measurements used in hippocampus related clinical diseases or needed in experiments.