Techniques for Measuring Brain Deformation

The oldest technique for measuring changes in brain size from MR scans is volumetry. Brain volumetry, at its most basic, involves using a mouse or similar device to draw around structures of interest in the brain, one slice at a time, at all the time points of interest, and count voxels within the boundaries to determine volume change between time-points. The limitations of this approach are firstly, the effort required from a skilled operator (can be several hours per brain), and secondly the subjectivity. The subjectivity can cause poor reproducibility, as inter-observer variability can be high.