1. ¹Department of Military Psychiatry, Central Military Hospital, Utrecht, The Netherlands
2. ²Department of Psychiatry, Rudolf Magnus Institute of Neuroscience, Utrecht, The Netherlands
3. ³Departments of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Radiology, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA, USA
4. ⁴Center for Positron Emission Tomography, Decatur, GA, USA
5. ⁵Atlanta VAMC, Decatur, GA, USA

Correspondence: E Geuze, Department of Military Psychiatry, Central Military Hospital and Department of Psychiatry, Rudolf Magnus Institute of Neuroscience, Mailbox B.01.2.06, Heidelberglaan 100, 3584 CX Utrecht, The Netherlands. E-mail: s.g.geuze@azu.nl

Received 26 February 2004; Revised 29 June 2004; Accepted 26 July 2004; Published online 31 August 2004.

Abstract

The advance of neuroimaging techniques has resulted in a burgeoning of studies reporting abnormalities in brain structure and function in a number of neuropsychiatric disorders. Measurement of hippocampal volume has developed as a useful tool in the study of neuropsychiatric disorders. We reviewed the literature and selected all English-language, human subject, data-driven papers on hippocampal volumetry, yielding a database of 423 records. From this database, the methodology of all original manual tracing protocols were studied. These protocols differed in a number of important factors for accurate hippocampal volume determination including magnetic field strength, the number of slices assessed and the thickness of slices, hippocampal orientation correction, volumetric correction, software used, inter-rater reliability, and anatomical boundaries of the hippocampus. The findings are discussed in relation to optimizing determination of hippocampal volume.