Regional Thickness Measurement of Extra-hippocampal Medial Temporal Lobe Structures

Extra-hippocampal medial temporal lobe (ehMTL) structures, which consists of entorhinal (ERC) and perirhinal (PRC) cortices, receives increasing attention because they are amongst the earliest sites affected by Alzheimer`s Disease (AD) pathology and due to their important and complex role in episodic memory. However, large anatomical variation in the medial temporal lobe (MTL) makes it a challenging area for analysis. In order to address this problem, we develop an automatic segmentation, clustering, and thickness measurement approach that explicitly accounts for anatomical variation in this region. Our proposed approach yields thickness measurements with greater statistical power in distinguishing Mile Cognitive Impairment (MCI) from normal control.