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Fractal Dimension in Human Cerebellum Measured by Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Jing Z. Liu ^* , Lu D. Zhang ^*  and Guang H. Yue ^* 

^* Department of Biomedical Engineering, The Lerner Research Institute, The Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Cleveland, Ohio; and Departments of Physics and Biomedical Engineering, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio

Correspondence: Address reprint requests to Jing Z. Liu, PhD, Dept. of Biomedical Engineering/ND20, The Cleveland Clinic Foundation, 9500 Euclid Ave., Cleveland, OH 44195 USA. Tel.: 216-445-6735; Fax: 216-444-9198; E-mail: liuj{at}bme.ri.ccf.org.

Fractal dimension has been used to quantify the structures of a wide range of objects in biology and medicine. We measured fractal dimension of human cerebellum (CB) in magnetic resonance images of 24 healthy young subjects (12 men and 12 women). CB images were resampled to a series of image sets with different 3D resolutions. At each resolution, the skeleton of the CB white matter was obtained and the number of pixels belonging to the skeleton was determined. Fractal dimension of the CB skeleton was calculated using the box-counting method. The results indicated that the CB skeleton is a highly fractal structure, with a fractal dimension of 2.57 ± 0.01. No significant difference in the CB fractal dimension was observed between men and women.