A Brain Morphometry Study with Across-Site Harmonization Using a ComBat-Generalized Additive Model in Children and...

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Developmental Neuroscience
• Medical Imaging

Background:

• Brain structure and function are linked across development.
• Quantitative brain morphometry is vital for neuroscience research.
• Multicenter studies require harmonized data to control for scanner effects, especially for rare diseases lacking normative data.

Purpose of the Study:

• To establish sex- and age-specific, harmonized, across-site normal reference values for global and regional brain volumes in children and adolescents.
• To facilitate accurate brain morphometric analysis in multicenter studies and clinical settings.
• To support the investigation of brain morphology in rare and ultra-rare neurological conditions.

Main Methods:

• Collected magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data from 846 neurotypical participants (ages 6.0-17.9 years) across five institutions.
• Utilized the CIVET 2.1.0 pipeline for regional brain volume analysis.
• Applied ComBat-GAM harmonization to combine and standardize measurements across sites.

Main Results:

• Generated normative reference values for global and regional brain volumes stratified by sex and age group.
• Provided lateral indices for detailed brain morphology assessment.
• Successfully harmonized data from multiple institutions to create a unified reference dataset.

Conclusions:

• The derived normal reference values are valuable for assessing individual brain morphology in clinical practice.
• This dataset serves as a critical resource for research on neurodevelopmental trajectories.
• The study addresses the need for standardized, multicenter brain morphometry data, particularly for rare disease research.