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Growth charts of brain morphometry for preschool children
Hongxi Zhang1, Jia Li2, Xiaoli Su1
1Department of Radiology, Children's Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, China.
Insights
This study provides quantitative brain growth charts for children aged 1-6 years, aiding in early detection of neurodevelopmental disorders and speech/language delays using brain morphology metrics.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Developmental Biology
- Pediatric Radiology
Background:
- Early brain development (1-6 years) is crucial for functional capabilities and can reveal neurodevelopmental disorders.
- Quantitative models for brain morphology changes and individualized inferences are lacking for this critical period.
- This gap hinders early identification of atypical brain development in preschool children.
Purpose of the Study:
- To characterize age-dependent changes in cortical thickness and subcortical volume in neurologically normal children aged 1-6 years.
- To construct quantitative growth charts for brain regions during early childhood.
- To assess the utility of these growth charts in identifying early brain atypicality, including developmental speech and language disorders.
Main Methods:
- Analysis of brain morphology (cortical thickness, subcortical volume) in 285 neurologically normal children.
- Development of quantitative growth curve models for various brain regions.
- Validation of growth charts for identifying children with developmental speech and language disorders using percentile measures.
Main Results:
- Established age-dependent growth charts for cortical thickness and subcortical volume in preschool children.
- Observed varied trends: cortical thickness generally decreased with age, while subcortical volumes showed diverse patterns (increasing, decreasing, inverted-U).
- Growth curve models accurately identified brain atypicality, achieving 0.875 accuracy (AUC 0.943) for developmental speech and language disorders.
Conclusions:
- The study fills a critical knowledge gap in pediatric brain morphometrics during the 1-6 year period.
- Developed quantitative tools for individualized brain developmental status evaluation.
- The publicly shared brain growth charts offer a sensitive method for early detection of neurodevelopmental atypicalities.
Abstract:
Brain development from 1 to 6 years of age anchors a wide range of functional capabilities and carries early signs of neurodevelopmental disorders. However, quantitative models for depicting brain morphology changes and making individualized inferences are lacking, preventing the identification of early brain atypicality during this period. With a sample size of 285, we characterized the age dependence of the cortical thickness and subcortical volume in neurologically normal children and constructed quantitative growth charts of all brain regions for preschool children. While the cortical thickness of most brain regions decreased with age, the entorhinal and parahippocampal regions displayed an inverted-U shape of age dependence. Compared to the cortical thickness, the normalized volume of subcortical regions exhibited more divergent trends, with some regions increasing, some decreasing, and some displaying inverted-U-shaped trends. The growth curve models for all brain regions demonstrated utilities in identifying brain atypicality. The percentile measures derived from the growth curves facilitate the identification of children with developmental speech and language disorders with an accuracy of 0.875 (area under the receiver operating characteristic curve: 0.943). Our results fill the knowledge gap in brain morphometrics in a critical development period and provide an avenue for individualized brain developmental status evaluation with demonstrated sensitivity. The brain growth charts are shared with the public (http://phi-group.top/resources.html).
