The future: new methods of imaging exploration in Alzheimer's disease.
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a complex disease characterized by a whole cascade of pathological events. During the last 100 years, the role of amyloid in the development of AD has been the focus of major research. Today there is hope that amyloid imaging may help in the early detection of the disease and be used for evaluating new drug therapies including neuroprotective and preventive therapies in AD. The rapid development of the molecular imaging techniques now allows in vivo imaging not only of brain functional activity such as cerebral blood flow, cerebral glucose metabolism and neurotransmitter activity, and receptor density, but also pathological processes such as amyloid plaques and microglial activation in AD. Several positron emission tomography amyloid imaging ligands have recently been developed and tested in AD patients. High amyloid content can be detected in vivo by positron emission tomography in prodromal AD preceding the impairment of functional activity like cerebral glucose metabolism, and reduction in cholinergic activity, which are likely to follow the course of cognitive impairment.
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D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000473:pathology*; D003952:Diagnostic Imaging / Q000379:methods* / Q000639:trends*; D006801:Humans; D011877:Radionuclide Imaging