Objective:

To investigate age-related red nucleus volume differences associated with healthy aging.  

Background:

It is essential to identify and distinguish the subclinical neurodegenerative changes undetectable for clinical evaluation from the normal evolution of brain structure and function. Red Nucleus controls movement velocity encoding, gait and project to both cortical regions and the spinal cord.

Design/Methods:

The study population consists of 228 healthy participants from the Max Planck Institut Leipzig Mind-Brain-Body Dataset LEMON. Age was provided as a 5-year range. MRI imaging included single 3D T2-weighted Sagittal acquisition consisting of 176 slices, TR=3200ms, TE=409ms, FA=variable, pre-scan normalization, echo spacing=3.42 ms, bandwidth=751 Hz/pixel, FOV=256 mm, voxel size=1 mm isotropic, GRAPPA acceleration factor 2, duration=4min 43s. Segmentation of the red Nucleus used the pBrain algorithm relying on the following steps: denoising, registration, inhomogeneity correction, intensity standardization, cropping, superresolution, and non-linear registration to identify the location and volume of the red Nucleus measured as the sum of left and right nuclei. The statistical analysis relied on R-CRAN 3.6.3 and R-Studio 2022.07.2.  

Results:

Demographic characteristics: younger population (N=154, 25.1±3.1 years, range 20–35 years, 45 female) and an elderly population (N=74, 67.6±4.7 years, range 59–77 years, 37 female). Segmentation succeeded in 198 individuals. The volume of the Red Nucleus was normally distributed (Lillie.test) and had a mean volume of 498±84 mm³. The relative red nucleus volume to intracranial volume was 0.034±0.005. The correlation coefficient for the 5-year age-range period and red nucleus volume in mm³ was R²=–0.62 p< 0.001. The correlation coefficient for the 5-year age-range period and red nucleus volume relative to the intracranial volume was R²=–0.60 p< 0.001.  

Conclusions:

Early identification of degenerative changes in the brain using non-invasive and widely available MRI sequences is vital for diagnosis and preventive therapies. Quantifying brain iron might improve the precise determination of red nucleus signal and volume evolution.