뇌 영상 검사를 이용한 알쯔하이머병 조기 진단

Early Diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease Using Neuroimaging - Focus on Recent MRI and PET Studies -

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia. Because any antidementia treatment is not likely to reverse existing neuronal damage but rather to slow disease progression, early diagnosis is an important approach to identifying candidates for antidementia drug applications before the dementing process causes permanent brain damage. Neuroimaging could be the best alternative to pathologic confirmation of AD with biopsy that is invasive to subjects or post-mortem evaluation. In this manuscript, author summarized recent studies for early diagnosis of AD using neuroimaging techniques that have relatively high spatial resolution of regional volumetry using three dimensional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), Fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose positron emission tomography (FDG-PET), Diffusion tensor imaging, and PET imaging of Alzheimer pathology with ligand. Moreover, author comments the future direction for early diagnosis of AD using neuroimaging.