Change Point Estimation of the Hippocampal Volumes in Alzheimer's Disease

Volumetric changes in the hippocampus have been shown to precede clinical symptom onset during the preclinical phase of Alzheimer's disease (AD). In this paper, we propose a novel statistical method for estimating the change point of the hippocampus, as extracted from structural magnetic resonance imaging scans, in relation to clinical symptom onset. We used a linear mixed-effect statistical model. Maximum likelihood estimation was employed as the strategy that was applied in two phases.