Researchers Use MRI to Predict Alzheimer's Disease

A study to be presented at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America found magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) brain scans outperform common clinical tests at predicting Alzheimer's development, reports Medical Xpress . Brain MRIs via diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), which evaluate the state of the brain's white matter, hold promise for analysis of dementia risk. The team measured differences in DTI in people who decline from normal cognition or mild cognitive impairment to Alzheimer's, versus controls who do not develop dementia. They performed exams on 61 people drawn from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative, about half of whom later developed Alzheimer's. Participants who developed the disease had lower fractional anisotropy (FA) compared with those who did not, suggesting damage to white matter, as well as statistically significant reductions in certain frontal white matter tracts. "Using FA values and other associated global metrics of white matter integrity, we were able to achieve 89 percent accuracy in predicting who would go onto develop Alzheimer's disease," noted Washington University School of Medicine Professor Cyrus A. Raji. "The Mini-mental State Examination and APOE4 gene testing have accuracy rates of about 70-71 percent."