Abstract

Background: It has recently been suggested that new imaging methods suchas magnetization transfer imaging (MTI) may play an important role in detecting subtle gray- and white-matterabnormalities in schizophrenia. The aim of the study was to investigate whether MTI, analyzed on a voxel-by-voxelbasis, could identify areas of abnormal magnetization transfer ratio (MTR) in patients with schizophrenia.Material/Methods: Twenty schizophrenic patients and 23 healthy controls matched for handedness and demographicvariables underwent MTI and T1-weighted structural MRI in a 3-tesla scanner. Post-processing was performedwith SPM99 and included co-registration of the MT-weighted and non-MT-weighted images, calculation ofthe MTR maps, spatial normalization, and smoothing. Differences in the MTR maps between groups were assessedusing two-sample t-tests. Significant changes in MTR were detected at an individual voxel threshold of p

Keywords: Brain - pathology, Case-Control Studies, Image Processing, Computer-Assisted, Magnetic Resonance Imaging - methods, Schizophrenia - pathology