Use of texture analysis for structural brain assessment in young adults undergoing a moderate-intensity running training program

Abstract

The technique of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is today one of the most used methods for carrying out in vivo studies of the human body and its pathologies, in a non-invasive way. MRI generates digital images, which can be analyzed with image processing methods, such as texture analysis - this allows the description of an image based on a few parameters. There are several approaches for extracting texture parameters from an image, and for medical images, one of the most used has been the statistical approach. Statistical texture parameters have shown statistically significant differences in MR images of normal individuals and patients with anomalies in anatomical regions that appear normal under simple visual inspection of the image. The objective of this project is to study and analyze the texture of images, obtained by MRI, of the brains of individuals subject to a moderate intensity running program, and verify the occurrence of possible structural changes resulting from training.