Brain MRI Analysis as a Biomarker of Psychiatric and Neurological Disorders: Towards a Justified and Reasonable Analysis

Abstract

T1 contrast Magnetic resonance image (MRI) is a high contrast imaging technique of soft tissues for the diagnosis of neuropsychiatric disorders with brain degeneration, due to its high contrast of soft tissues. Recently, from development of image analysis techniques by engineering and informatics researchers, it has become possible to quantitatively evaluate the volume of brain tissue in the region of anatomical interest or Voxel by Voxel, which is a highly quantitative, objective, and reproducible technique as a surrogate biomarker of disorders. However, the reproducibility of MRI remains problems due to geometric distortions and inhomogeneity of the signals, as well as differences in the analysis values between scanners. For such problems, there have been some reports, unification of the imaging protocols and attempts to remove the non-uniformity and geometric distortions by image pre-processing correction. To address the problem of inter-device reproducibility, harmonization based on probability and statistics has been attracting attention in the recent years. This paper introduced the points to be considered when engineering and informatics researchers perform analysis and research using clinical images.