Minor Physical Anomalies (MPAs) arise during the first trimester of prenatal life and occur more frequently in autism and related neurodevelopmental disorders. We measured intra-orbital distances from T1 weighted images of children with autism aged 6 – 16 years and typically developing peers. We report a significant increase in intra-orbital distance in autism. Using voxel-wise linear regression analysis intra-orbital distances were found to positively correlate with the volume of inferio-temporal regions including the amygdala in the autism group only. We suggest that intra-orbital MPA may provide a ‘fossil’ record of much earlier childhood brain expansion in autism.published_or_final_versionThe 19th Annual Meeting of the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (ISMRM), Montreal, Canada, 7-13 May 2011. In Proceedings of the 19th ISMRM, 2011, p. 252
