Accuracy assessment of global and local atrophy measurement techniques with realistic simulated longitudinal Alzheimer's disease images

Results obtained in our experiments with realistic simulated data confirm previously published estimates of accuracy for both evaluated global techniques. Regarding Jacobian Integration methods, the FFD-based one demonstrated promising results and potential for being used in clinical studies alongside (or in place of) the more common global methods. The generated gold standard data has also allowed us to identify some stages and sets of parameters in the evaluated techniques - the brain extraction step in the global techniques and the number of multi-resolution levels and the stopping criteria in the registration-based methods - that are critical for their accuracy.