title: Medial temporal atrophy as a magnetic resonance imaging marker for Alzheimer's disease.
abstract: Medial temporal lobe atrophy (MTLA) on brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) may help differentiate Alzheimer's disease (AD) from multiinfarct dementia (MID) and other dementias.  MTLA was seen in 6 of 11 patients with clinically diagnosed AD, 16 of 20 with mixed dementia (with both AD and MID), 1 of 5 with psychiatric disease, and in none of 32 with MID or 8 with other dementias (p less than 0.0001). Increased patchy periventricular signal, or "unidentified bright objects" were seen in 2 of 11 patients with AD, 10 of 20 patients with AD and MID, and 26 of 32 patients with MID.  A larger series with autopsy correlation may verify that MTLA is a reasonably specific marker for AD, and unidentified bright objects are a sensitive, but not specific, marker for vascular dementias.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, University of South Florida Health Sciences Center, Tampa 33612.
authors.forename: L L
authors.initials: LL
authors.lastname: Barclay
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Linden
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Murtagh
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000473:pathology; D015140:Dementia, Vascular / Q000175:diagnosis*; D003937:Diagnosis, Differential; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000473:pathology*