Cross-platform comparison of precision and time effectiveness of automated versus semi-automated brain volumetric measurements in healthy Egyptian adults

Abstract

Abstract Background The primary goal of this study is to evaluate the precision, time effectiveness and reproducibility of open source automated magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) brain volumetric measurement platforms as compared to the semi-automated methods. The secondary goal of the study is to create age-stratified database of MRI brain volumetric measures of healthy Egyptian adults. Results Statistically significant variation were found between the absolute but not the relative volumetric measures (P-value < 0.001). Both the absolute and relative global volumetric measures were strongly correlated with age. Only the absolute volumes showed strong correlation with gender with male volumes being significantly higher than females (P-value < 0.0001), while the normative ratio correlation with gender varied with the utilized software. Conclusions FMRIB's software library automated segmentation tool (FSL-FAST) was considered the most efficient program to run global volumetric analysis, unless concurrent advanced volumetric analysis is needed or gray matter volume is the main objective of the volumetric analysis, then FreeSurfer is considered the most efficient volumetric software.

Keywords

• Automated MRI brain volumetry
• FSL-FAST
• FSL-FIRST
• FreeSurfer
• CAT12-SPM
• Global brain volumetry