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Head Motion Parameters in fMRI Differ Between Patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment and Alzheimer Disease Versus Elderly Control Subjects

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Abstract

Motion artifacts are a well-known and frequent limitation during neuroimaging workup of cognitive decline. While head motion typically deteriorates image quality, we test the hypothesis that head motion differs systematically between healthy controls (HC), amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) and Alzheimer disease (AD) and consequently might contain diagnostic information. This prospective study was approved by the local ethics committee and includes 28 HC (age 71.0 ± 6.9 years, 18 females), 15 aMCI (age 67.7 ± 10.9 years, 9 females) and 20 AD (age 73.4 ± 6.8 years, 10 females). Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) at 3T included a 9 min echo-planar imaging sequence with 180 repetitions. Cumulative average head rotation and translation was estimated based on standard fMRI preprocessing and compared between groups using receiver operating characteristic statistics. Global cumulative head rotation discriminated aMCI from controls [p < 0.01, area under curve (AUC) 0.74] and AD from controls (p < 0.01, AUC 0.73). The ratio of rotation z versus y discriminated AD from controls (p < 0.05, AUC 0.71) and AD from aMCI (p < 0.05, AUC of 0.75). Head motion systematically differs between aMCI/AD and controls. Since motion is not random but convoluted with diagnosis, the higher amount of motion in aMCI and AD as compared to controls might be a potential confounding factor for fMRI group comparisons. Additionally, head motion not only deteriorates image quality, yet also contains useful discriminatory information and is available for free as a “side product” of fMRI data preprocessing.

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Abbreviations

AD:

Alzheimer disease

aMCI:

Amnestic mild cognitive impairment

AUC:

Area under the curve

fMRI:

Functional magnetic resonance imaging

HC:

Healthy control

MMS:

Mini mental state

MRI:

Magnetic resonance imaging

PET:

Positron emission tomography

rs-fMRI:

Resting-state fMRI

ROC:

Receiver operating characteristic

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Acknowledgments

We thank all volunteers and patients for participating in this study. This study was supported, in part, by a grant of the VELUX Foundation

Funding

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. No current external funding sources for this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Service Neuro-diagnostique et Neuro-interventionnel, Department of Imaging and Medical Informatics, University Hospitals of Geneva, Rue Gabrielle Perret-Gentil 4, 1211, Geneva 14, Switzerland

    Sven Haller

  2. Memory Clinic, University Center for Medicine of Aging Basel, Felix Platter Hospital, Basel, Switzerland

    Andreas U. Monsch

  3. Functional Imaging in Neuropsychiatric Disorders Laboratory, Department of Neurology and Neurological Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Jonas Richiardi

  4. Laboratory for NeuroImaging of Cognition, Department of Neurosciences and Departement of Neurology, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland

    Jonas Richiardi

  5. Department of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, Neuroscience Campus Amsterdam, VU University Medical Centre, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

    Frederik Barkhof

  6. University Center for Medicine of Aging Basel, Felix Platter Hospital, Basel, Switzerland

    Reto W. Kressig

  7. Medical Image Analysis Center MIAC, University Hospitals of Basel, Basel, Switzerland

    Ernst W. Radue

Authors
  1. Sven Haller
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  2. Andreas U. Monsch
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  3. Jonas Richiardi
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  4. Frederik Barkhof
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  5. Reto W. Kressig
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  6. Ernst W. Radue
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sven Haller.

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Haller, S., Monsch, A.U., Richiardi, J. et al. Head Motion Parameters in fMRI Differ Between Patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment and Alzheimer Disease Versus Elderly Control Subjects. Brain Topogr 27, 801–807 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10548-014-0358-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10548-014-0358-6

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