Indices of Regional Brain Atrophy: Formulae and Nomenclature

The pattern of brain atrophy helps to discriminate normal age-related changes from neurodegenerative diseases. Albeit indices of regional brain atrophy have proven to be a parameter useful in the early diagnosis and differential diagnosis of some neurodegenerative diseases, indices of absolute regional atrophy still have some important limitations. We propose using indices of relative atrophy for representing how the volume of a given region of interest (ROI) changes over time in comparison to changes in global brain measures over the same time. A second problem in morphometric studies is terminology. There is a lack of systematization naming indices and the same measure can be named with different terms by different research groups or imaging softwares. This limits the understanding and discussion of studies. In this technological report, we provide a general description on how to compute indices of absolute and relative regional brain atrophy and propose a standardized nomenclature.