클리닉소개

THE SEOUL YOUTH CLINIC

연구 및 치료성과

An MRI study of structural variations in schizophrenia using deformation field morphometry
Journal
Psychiatry Research
Vol
146
Page
171-177
Author
Uicheul Yoon, Jong-Min Lee, Jun Soo Kwon, Hyun-Pil Kim, Yong-Wook Shin, Tae Hyon Ha, In Young Kim, Kee-Hyun Chang, Sun I Kim
Year
2006

Abstract

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has an important role in investigating the changes in brain structure that are associated with schizophrenia. In this study, MRI scans of patients diagnosed with schizophrenia (37 males; 19 females; 17–42 years of age) were compared with those of an age- and sex-matched group of normal subjects (37 males; 19 females; 18–40 years of age). Based on the images of the healthy control subjects, we constructed a representative average brain template. Automated image analysis techniques were used to measure differences in the regional nonlinear deformation fields between the two groups. A deformation field, which measures the spatial transformation to deform a template of brain anatomy to each individual data, was obtained as a three-dimensional displacement vector in each voxel. There was a significantly greater magnitude of the deformation fields in the superior frontal and parietal lobes as well as in the cingulate gyrus connecting both lobes of the patients with schizophrenia than in those of healthy controls, suggesting that these cerebral regions have a significantly higher structural variability in schizophrenia.