Eur. Phys. J. Plus (2012) 127: 135
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/i2012-12135-6

Regular Article

Alzheimer’s disease markers from structural MRI and FDG-PET brain images

¹ INFN, Sezione di Genova, I-16146, Genova, Italy
² Medicina Nucleare, Dip. di Medicina Interna e Specialità Mediche Università degli Studi di Genova, Genova, Italy
³ Dipartimento di Fisica, Università degli Studi di Genova, I-16146, Genova, Italy
⁴ Dipartimento Interateneo di Fisica “M. Merlin” and TIRES, Università degli Studi di Bari, Bari, Italy
⁵ INFN, Sezione di Trieste, I-34127, Trieste, Italy
⁶ Dipartimento di Fisica, Università degli Studi di Trieste, I-34127, Trieste, Italy
⁷ Neurofisiologia Clinica, Dipartimento di Neuroscienze, Oftalmologia e Genetica, Azienda Ospedale-Università S. Martino, Genova, I-16132, Genova, Italy

^* e-mail: andrea.chincarini@ge.infn.it

Received: 6 June 2012
Revised: 5 September 2012
Accepted: 9 October 2012
Published online: 12 November 2012

Abstract

Despite the widespread use of neuroimaging tools (morphological and functional) in the routine diagnostic of cerebral diseases, the information available by the end user -the clinician- remains largely limited to qualitative visual analysis. This restriction greatly reduces the diagnostic impact of neuroimaging in routine clinical practice and increases the risk of misdiagnosis. In this context, researches are focussing on the development of sophisticated automatic analyses able to extract clinically relevant information from the captured data. The identification of biological markers at early stages of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) contributes to diagnostic accuracy and adds prognostic value. However, in spite of recent developments, results of structural and functional imaging studies on predicting conversion to AD are not uniform. We provide here an overview of analysis methods and approaches, discussing their contribution to clinical assessment.