One study under way by members of the center seeks to understand anatomical changes in the gray matter of the cingulate gyrus between patients with dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT) and age-matched control subjects. Labeled cortical mantle distance maps (LCMDMs) are created by automated segmentation and isosurface generation on magnetic resonance images and consist of the distance from the center of each gray matter voxel to the gray matter–white matter interface. The Wilcoxon (rank sum) test has been used on these LCMDMs of the cingulate gyrus to show stochastic ordering between control and DAT populations, which indicates cortical thinning. Students’ t-tests have been used to show significant volume reduction in the gray matter. Wilcoxon tests have also been used to show increasing variability in the LCMDMs with progressing DAT.

The figure above depicts stochastic ordering between populations in the left posterior cingulate regions. The cdf estimates for the LCMDM, young control (YC) population, age-matched patients with no dementia (CDR 0), age-matched patients with very mild dementia (CDR 0.5), and age-matched patients with mild dementia (CDR 1) are shown in the right posterior cingulate region.