STRUCTURE: Ventricles
Third ventricle
     left and right lateral horn
     (including the posterior horn of the lateral ventricles),
     left and right temporal horn of the lateral ventricles
PAINTER:   Suzan Murtha <smurtha@yorku.ca>
SUPERVISOR: Howard Chertkow
DATE:      January to February 1997
SPACE:    Talairach??
VOLUMES:   all data is save on the optical disc entitled "mriMGH Susan
    Murtha/H.Chertkow"
LABELS:    usr/people/murthas/labels/AbAlabels.mnc
           (where AbA stands for the patients name, ie first two letters are
     taken from the beginning of last name, last letter is the beginning      of the first name)
THRESHOLD: ??
COMMENTS:
a) brief description of the project for which this data was used.
        We've obtained MRI scans at the Montreal General Hospital (4 mm
thick sections taken coronally from the anterior commissure to the
posterior commissure and 5 mm thick sections taken sagittally throughout
the whole brain) from a large cohort of normal elderly control subjects,
dementia of the Alzheimer's Type patients (DAT), and subjects with Age
Associated Cognitive Decline (AACD). At the Brain Imaging Center, the two
sets of scans are merged together (with a program that Louis created) and
resliced at 1 mm thick sections so that they can be "painted". Currently
the ventricular volume is being assessed. Although Alzheimer's disease
shows a great deal of heterogeneity in its symptomology, the one
consistent observation is the increase of plaques and tangles in the
temporal lobe and as well the signs of memory loss at its earliest
stages. These two observations lead people to believe that the
hippocampal volume as well as the temporal horn of the lateral ventricles
will reflect this deterioration. We have previously assessed the
hippocampal volumes in these subjects (not painted but via a more tedious
time consuming measurement method) and are now interested in assessing
the group differences in the ventricular volume.

b) Description of the protocol used to define the outlines of the structure:
        Five measurements are made, the third ventricle, left and right
lateral horn (including the posterior horn of the lateral ventricles),
and left and right temporal horn of the lateral ventricles.
Temporal Horn of the lateral ventricle was assessed as follows:
        First appearance posteriorally in coronal series continued
caudally until the inferior horn of the ventricle joined the lateral horn
of the ventricle to form the atrium - collatoral trigone. Sagittal series
measured lateral to medial. Temporal horn appearance correlated with the
coronal view. If there was a conflict the sagittal series was deemed more
accurate and defined the area.
Third ventricle assessed as follows:
        -began with the appearance of optic chiasm on sagittal series and
continued posteriorly until just posterior to posterior commissure.
Lateral ventricles - rest of the system.

Note: January to February 1997 the first 44 subjects had ventricle volumes
assessed. The study is ongoing and there is a research assistant coming
in to do more measurements. Therefore, there will be more measurements in
the future.

n=44