Cross-Subject Image Analysis in Diffusion Brain MRI

As our life expectancy continues to rise, the prevalence of diseases associated with aging increases correspondingly. For Alzheimer’s disease, this implies that the number of persons affected, directly or indirectly, will rise dramatically. Early diagnosis, intervention, and ultimately prevention of Alzheimer’s disease are therefore ever more urgent research aims. Advanced neuroimaging techniques such as diffusion MRI, which provides non-invasive insight into brain changes at the microstructural level, are promising for the identification of changes that relate to the early stages of the disease. Disentangling these early pathological changes from those in ‘normal’ brain aging however requires more insight in the broad spectrum of brain changes that commonly accompany advancing age. Investigating these changes in a population-based context poses novel challenges by demanding new and advanced methods for analyzing the large number of subjects effectively.