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Updated: Aug 14, 2026

Diffusion Tensor Magnetic Resonance Imaging in the Analysis of Neurodegenerative Diseases
Published on: July 28, 2013
The correlation of cognitive decline with frontotemporal dementia induced annualized gray matter loss using
Brian Avants1, Murray Grossman, James C Gee
1University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia, 19104-6389, USA. avants@grasp.cis.upenn.edu
Abstract:
This study uses large deformation medical image registration to analyze, in a disease-specific normalized space, the annual rate of gray matter atrophy caused by frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and its correlation with cognitive decline. The analysis consists of three parts. First, a labeled structural MRI atlas is deformed into the shape of an average FTD brain. Second, annualized FTD-related atrophy of gray matter structures is estimated for each patient in the database. Third, the group-wise annualized atrophy rate caused by FTD is correlated, for each gray matter voxel, with declining performance on cognitive tests. This study gives insight into the relationship between FTD-related progressive cortical atrophy and loss in cognitive function.
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