title: An MRI-based approach for the measurement of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in humans.
abstract: The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) has been implicated in the pathophysiology of mental disorders. Previous region-of-interest MRI studies that attempted to delineate this region adopted various landmarks and measurement techniques, with inconsistent results. We developed a new region-of-interest measurement method to obtain morphometric data of this region from structural MRI scans, taking into account knowledge from cytoarchitectonic postmortem studies and the large inter-individual variability of this region. MRI scans of 10 subjects were obtained, and DLPFC tracing was performed in the coronal plane by two independent raters using the semi-automated software Brains2. The intra-class correlation coefficients between two independent raters were 0.94 for the left DLPFC and 0.93 for the right DLPFC. The mean +/- S.D. DLPFC volumes were 9.23 +/- 2.35 ml for the left hemisphere and 8.20 +/- 2.08 ml for the right hemisphere. Our proposed method has high inter-rater reliability and is easy to implement, permitting the standardized measurement of this region for clinical research applications
authors: Department of Psychiatry, Federal University of São Paulo, Rua Botucatu, São Paulo, 740 CEP 04023-900, Brazil.
authors: Marsal
authors: M
authors: Sanches
authors: Sheila
authors: S
authors: Caetano
authors: Mark
authors: M
authors: Nicoletti
authors: E Serap
authors: ES
authors: Monkul
authors: Hua Hsuan
authors: HH
authors: Chen
authors: John P
authors: JP
authors: Hatch
authors: Ping-Hong
authors: PH
authors: Yeh
authors: Rachel L
authors: RL
authors: Mullis
authors: Matcheri S
authors: MS
authors: Keshavan
authors: Grazyna
authors: G
authors: Rajowska
authors: Jair C
authors: JC
authors: Soares
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D008297:Male; D015588:Observer Variation; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results