The role of quantitative structural imaging in the early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease.
The goal of this article is to review the role of structural neuroimaging in the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (AD). We present relevant neuroanatomy, highlight progress in the domain of AD imaging, and review the clinical characteristics of the prodromal phase of AD. We describe the history of the diagnostic issue by examining at cross-section and longitudinally the differences between patients who have AD and normal controls. We also present how subsequent works applied these characteristic traits to the early detection of the prodromal disease and to prediction of future decline. The article delineates the differences between subjects who have mild cognitive impairment and AD, which illustrate the spreading of the pathology with disease progression. The last section describes problems encountered in the differential diagnosis.
Glodzik-Sobanska
Lidia
L
Center for Brain Health, New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY 10016, USA.
Rusinek
Henry
H
Mosconi
Lisa
L
Li
Yi
Y
Zhan
Jiong
J
de Santi
Susan
S
Convit
Antonio
A
Rich
Kenneth
K
Brys
Miroslaw
M
de Leon
Mony J
MJ
D000368:Aged; D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000175:diagnosis*; D001921:Brain / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000473:pathology*; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis*; D003937:Diagnosis, Differential; D018450:Disease Progression; D042241:Early Diagnosis; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed / Q000379:methods*