Structural MRI: Morphometry

Human brains are characterised by considerable intersubject anatomical variability, which is of interest in both clinical practice and research. Computational morphometry of magnetic resonance images has emerged as the method of choice for studying macroscopic changes in brain structure. Magnetic resonance imaging not only allows the acquisition of images of the entire brain in vivo but also the tracking of changes over time using repeated measurements, while computational morphometry enables the automated analysis of subtle changes in brain structure. In this section, several voxel-based morphometric methods for the automated analysis of brain images are presented. In the first part, some basic principles and techniques are introduced, while deformationand voxel-based morphometry are discussed in the second part.