Difference of Alzheimer's disease sub-groups using two features from intensity size zone matrix.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is known as one of the important diseases with worldwide impact. Unfortunately, we have not found the cause and treatment methods for AD. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is an important research for AD research. Many recent studies focused on finding imaging biomarker associated with AD and mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Texture analysis jointly considers gray-level intensity and position of the voxels within a given region of interest (ROI). It can lead to better characterization of ROI than conventional approaches. We adopted one of the texture analysis methods called intensity size zone matrix (ISZM) to compare AD, late MCI (LMCI), early MCI (EMCI) and normal control (NC) subjects in both hemispheres of the hippocampus. As a result, we were able to distinguish among the sub-groups using the intensity variability feature and size zone variability feature computed from ISZM.