Brain morphometry

As a subfield of morphometry, brain morphometry is concerned with the quantification of anatomical patterns in the brain. These include whole-brain parameters like brain volume, encephalization quotient, the distribution of grey matter and white matter as well as cerebrospinal fluid but also derived parameters like gyrification and cortical thickness or the size and shape of substructures of the brain, e.g. the hippocampus.

Currently, most applications of brain morphometry have a clinical focus, i.e. they serve to diagnose and monitor neuropsychiatric disorders, in particular neurodevelopmental disorders (like schizophrenia) or neurodegenerative diseases (like Alzheimer), but brain development and aging as well as brain evolution can also be studied this way.

Technically, several approaches exist for brain morphometric analyses: Voxel-based morphometry, deformation-based morphometry and surface-based morphometry.