MRI aids early diagnosis of schizophrenia

PHILADELPHIA, Nov 7, 2005 (UPI via COMTEX) -- University of Pennsylvania Health System scientists say the use of MRI can assist in the early diagnosis of schizophrenia.

The researchers looked for subtle brain abnormalities that cannot be seen by the human eye. A study examined the entire brain, looking at distributed patterns of abnormalities, rather than differences in specific regions of the brain.

"In this study, we used high-dimensional shape transformations in which we compared a brain image with a template of a normal brain," explained Christos Davatzikos, director of the biomedical image analysis section in the school's Department of Radiology. "Through this comparison, we then determined where and how the patient's brain differed from healthy controls. These methods are able to identify abnormalities that could not be detected by human inspection of the images created via MRI," he added.

The results of the study are published in the November issue of the JAMA's Archives of General Psychiatry.

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