Experience of using MRI morphometry in Huntington’s disease

One of the most important inherited neurodegenerative disorders, Huntington’s disease (HD), is characterized by cerebral atrophy, the features of which need to be clarified. MRI morphometry allows assessing quantitatively the atrophy of different brain regions, and this method may be regarded as a potential biomarker of neurodegeneration. We used whole-brain voxel-based morphometry (VBM) and region-of-interest (ROI) morphometry in 24 patients with HD, 10 preclinical HD gene carriers and 9 controls. On whole-brain VBM patients had significantly lower grey matter in the caudate, the putamen, and the pre- and postcentral gyri bilaterally compared to controls, while on ROI morphometry the grey matter volume decrease in patients was seen in the caudate, the putamen and the pallidum bilaterally. In clinically unaffected gene carriers the pallidum, the putamen, and the pre-and postcentral gyri bilaterally were larger and the left pallidum was smaller compared to controls. We found more pronounced atrophy of a dominant hemisphere in patients and gene carriers, as well as negative correlation between basal ganglia and cortical structures volumes and the mutation severity, motor and cognitive impairment.