Figure 1.
Volumetric segmentation of brain images.
(a–c) Thalamic segmentation. Axial MPRAGE image from a control subject (a) before and (b) after the addition of FA weighting from the co-registered FA image. Note the increase in clarity of the lateral border of the thalamus that facilitates (c) manual segmentation of the thalamus. (d–g) axial, coronal and sagittal images from a participant with MS demonstrating ROIs drawn for the mammillary bodies (blue) and right (yellow) and left (green) hippocampi. (h) Surface rendered representation of the segmented hippocampi and mammillary bodies from a participant with MS. The manually defined fornix ROI used to derive fornix FA is also shown (grey).
Figure 2.
Identification of focal MS lesions of the fornix.
(a) Axial FLAIR image from one of the participants with MS showing focal T2-hyperintesity in crus of the left fornix (LFx) with accompanying T1-hypointensity on the corresponding MPRAGE image (b). Crus of the right fornix labelled for comparison (RFx).
Figure 3.
Boxplots showing mean (a) mean fornix FA, (b) normalized total hippocampal volumes, (c) normalized total mammillary body volumes and (d) normalized total thalamic volumes for the MS and control groups.
Table 1.
Intra- and inter-observer reliability assessment for the volumetric measurement, made in a subset of 10 MS patients (thus 20 of each structure).
Table 2.
Neuropsychological test Z-scores (mean and range) for the MS cohort.
Figure 4.
Scatterplot showing mean fornix FA for the MS participants with and without visible T2 hyperintense lesions in the fornix.
Table 3.
Results of the regression analysis for performance in the four neuropsychological tests.
Figure 5.
Scatterplot showing the relationship between mean fornix FA and BVRT scores in the MS group.