Comparison between healthy young and elderly individuals using MRI texture analysis
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.29384/rbfm.2026.v20.19849001888Keywords:
Aging, Texture analysis, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Gray-level co-occurrence matrix, ContrastAbstract
It is well known that the brain changes as we age. Several magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-based studies have demonstrated structural changes in the brain, such as cortical thickness and volume. Conversely, few studies have investigated structural changes derived from MRI texture analysis. Texture analysis reflects underlying tissue characteristics, thus allowing the quantification of subtle structural variations in brain tissues that may not be apparent through standard image inspection. The aim of this study was to observe and compare brain texture in MRI images between healthy young and elderly individuals. To this end, MRI images from two groups, one of young and one of elderly individuals, were analyzed using the texture analysis technique with a second-order statistical approach, namely the gray-level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM). GLCMs computed in three dimensions were fitted to five intervoxel distances, and contrast and entropy parameters were extracted and compared between the groups. Statistically significant differences were found between the groups for both contrast and entropy parameters, for all intervoxel distances, suggesting that brain structure changes occur during aging. This difference occurred between brain areas related to memory, reasoning, numerical processing, and language. This study analyzed two different groups of individuals; in the future, it would be interesting to conduct longitudinal studies evaluating the same individuals over time to corroborate these findings.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Gyovana Prodocimo Lopes, Rafael Vinícius da Silveira , Isabelle Cristina Idalgo, Gabriela Castellano
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