A morphometric magnetic resonance method for measuring cranial, facial and brain characteristics for application to...

Serious psychopathology in adulthood may be associated with disturbed foetal brain development, which potentially shows lingering "fossil marks" in the cranial and facial regions. Several methods exist for assessing external craniofacial and internal brain distances but, to our knowledge, no method yet provides simultaneous measurement of cranial, facial and brain dimensions in live subjects. In this article we describe a method to identify landmarks on magnetic resonance images (MRI) for simultaneous measurement of cranial, facial and brain characteristics potentially associated with psychosis. To test the method itself, 30 patients with chronic schizophrenia and 31 healthy comparison subjects, mean age 41 years, were randomly selected from a larger cohort recruited at the Karolinska Hospital, Sweden. Participants were investigated with MRI, and 60 landmarks in the cranial, facial and brain regions were identified in the images. An independent anthropometric examination measured external craniofacial characteristics for study in relation to measurements produced through MRI. High inter-scorer and re-test reliabilities were obtained for two independent scorers of the landmarks in the MR images. Measurements of potentially comparable craniofacial distances showed high alignment with an established anthropometric method. This new method can provide simultaneous investigation of multiple aspects of cranial, facial and brain morphology in MR images originally collected for other purposes. In a second article we will use this method to compare 3D craniofacial measurements and shape between schizophrenia patients and healthy controls.