Exposure to early life trauma is common and confers risk for psychological disorders in adolescence, including posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Trauma exposure and PTSD are also consistently linked to alterations in gray matter volume (GMV). Despite the quantity of structural neuroimaging research in trauma-exposed populations, little consensus exists amongst research groups on best practices for image processing method and manual editing procedures. The purpose of this report is to evaluate the utility of manual editing of magnetic resonance (MR) images for detecting PTSD-related group differences in GMV. Here, T1-weighted MR images from adolescent girls aged 11–17 were obtained and analyzed. Two datasets were created from the FreeSurfer reconall pipeline, one of which was manually edited by trained research assistants. Gray matter regions of interest were selected and total volume estimates were entered into linear mixed effects models with method (manual edits or automated) as a within-subjects factor and group dummy-coded with PTSD as the reference group. Consistent with prior literature, individuals with PTSD demonstrated reduced GMV of the amygdala compared to trauma-exposed and non-trauma exposed controls, independent of editing method. Our results demonstrate that amygdala GMV reductions in PTSD are robust to certain methodological choices and do not suggest a benefit to the time-intensive manual editing pipeline in FreeSurfer for quantifying PTSD-related GMV.

暴露于早期生活创伤是常见的，并赋予青春期心理障碍的风险，包括创伤后应激障碍 (PTSD)。创伤暴露和 PTSD 也始终与灰质体积 (GMV) 的变化有关。尽管在受过创伤的人群中进行了大量的结构神经影像学研究，但研究小组对图像处理方法和手动编辑程序的最佳实践几乎没有达成共识。本报告的目的是评估手动编辑磁共振 (MR) 图像以检测 GMV 中与 PTSD 相关的组差异的效用。在这里，获得并分析了来自 11-17 岁少女的 T1 加权 MR 图像。从 FreeSurfer reconall创建了两个数据集管道，其中之一是由训练有素的研究助理手动编辑的。选择感兴趣的灰质区域，并将总体积估计值输入线性混合效应模型，方法（手动编辑或自动）作为受试者内因素，并以 PTSD 作为参考组进行组虚拟编码。与先前的文献一致，与受创伤和未受创伤的对照组相比，患有 PTSD 的个体表现出杏仁核的 GMV 降低，这与编辑方法无关。我们的结果表明，PTSD 中杏仁核 GMV 的减少对于某些方法选择是稳健的，并且并不表明 FreeSurfer 中用于量化 PTSD 相关 GMV 的时间密集型手动编辑流程有好处。