Alzheimer’s disease is now diagnosed by the onset and acceleration of symptoms.
Researchers now say they are hopeful that a new MRI-based brain scan can detect the disease before symptoms appear.
The scan uses an algorithm to scan 115 regions of the brain.
Another group of researchers says they are working on another method in which the brain is scanned for regions that aren’t functioning due to the loss of healthy neurons
The race is on to find new ways to get an early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease using easy, noninvasive, low-cost methods
Some of the most recent research has focused on using magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, scans of the brain
Alzheimer’s is usually diagnosed by the onset of symptoms, but by that time the disease is already underway
Once diagnosed, an MRI scan is able to show brain shrinkage associated with Alzheimer’s. So far, however, an MRI hasn’t been useful in picking up early signs of the disease
Now scientists say there may be some breakthroughs in getting an early diagnosis using an MRI. One of the latest studies was published ma team of researchers from both the United Kingdom and the United States says their predictive model relies on getting an MRI on a standard 1.5 Tesla machine that’s used for routine scans.
They adapted an algorithm used to classify cancer tumors. They divided the brain into 115 regions and allocated different features to each region
They trained the algorithm to identify where changes to those features could accurately predict the existence of Alzheimer’s disease
The team tested its approach on brain scans from more than 400 people with early-stage and late-stage Alzheimer’s and other neurological conditions. The researchers also tested it on data from more than 80 people undergoing tests to diagnose Alzheimer’
They reported that in 98 percent of cases, their MRI-based machine learning system could accurately predict whether a person had Alzheimer’s-related brain change
They said it was also able to distinguish between early-stage and late-stage Alzheimer’s with fairly high accuracy in 79 percent of people.
More research
“There is a lot of research going in this direction to try to use MRI or some other kinds of technology to detect early onset of Alzheimer’s,” said Dmitriy Yablonskiy, Ph.D., a professor of radiology at the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
Yablonskiy and his colleagues say they have a “novel MRI approach” that could be a way to identify brain cell damage in people in the early stages of Alzheimer’s before brain shrinkage is visible and before they have cognitive symptom
“It is easy to implement on commercial MRI scanners and it takes six minutes to get this information,” he told Healthl
The researchers published their study results in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease three months ago
Their approach involves a new quantitative Gradient Echo (qGRE) MRI technique developed in the Yablonskiy lab to show brain areas that are no longer functioning because of a loss of healthy neurons. Using the qGRE technique, those areas where the neurons were starting to degenerate appeared as so-called “dark matter
Without using that technique, they would appear normal on the MR
The research team studied 70 people, ages 60 to 90. They included people with no cognitive impairment as well as those with very mild, mild or moderate impairmen
Researchers applied their qGRE MRI technique to scan the hippocampus, the brain’s memory center and one of the earliest regions affected in Alzheimer’s. Their results showed that, in some participants, the region often contained a healthy tissue section with relatively preserved neurons and a “dark matter” dead zone without healthy neuron
Those “dark matter” zones showed up in people who tested positive for amyloid but were not yet experiencing symptom
Yablonskiy says next his team will set out to validate its findings with a larger study group. He believes their technique could be widely used to get an early Alzheimer’s diagnosi
“Im really excited about this, yes absolutely,” he said. “Not just me, but the whole team here.”s.s.s.t.I..”o.e.s.
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