Measurement Of Cortical Thickness And Its Application

The cerebral cortex is a sheet of gray matter located on the outer surface of the brain, which plays a key role in memory, attention, perceptual awareness, thought, language, and consciousness. Clinically, the assessment of human cerebral cortical thickness has massive importance in the determination of pathology and in assessing the processes of normal brain maturation and ageing. Nowadays, with the development of the magnetic resonance technology, it is possible to get a measurement for the thickness of the human cerebral cortex from MRI.In our study, we present a method which combines SPM(Statistical Parametric Mapping), Laplacian method and thickness correction to segment 3D MRI images, estimate cortical thickness, and analyze the thickness maps throughout the whole brain.Post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, is an anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to a terrifying event or ordeal in which grave physical harm occurred or was threatened. Traumatic events that may trigger PTSD include violent personal assaults, natural or human-caused disasters, accidents, or military combat. Analysis of the cortical volume or thickness changes in people with PTSD is important for the research on the cortical morphological changes caused by PTSD. Our research was performed between 14 survivors of mining disaster with PTSD and 11 survivors of the same event without PTSD. The results show that in the frontal gyrus and occipital lobe, the cortical thickness of survivors with PTSD is larger than those without PTSD, and in the parietal lobe, the cortical thickness changes to smaller, however, in the frontal gyrus the cortical volume changes to larger, and in the hippocampus the volume changes to smaller. So our research indicates that the cortical volume and thickness changes caused by PTSD are not in the same regions.