Aula meeting della Radiologia
Ospedale di Cattinara
26 Novembre ore 16.15
Methodological considerations on
neuroimaging-derived biomarkers in
Alzheimer's Disease
Dott. Andrea Chincarini
INFN sezione di Genova
The pathophysiologic process leading to neurodegeneration in Alzheimer's disease (AD) is thought to begin long before clinical symptoms develop. Together with the huge investment in the search
of disease-modifying therapeutics, an increasing effort has been devoted to improving in-vivo neuroimaging techniques, which can reliably and non-invasively assess aspects of neuroanatomy,
chemistry, physiology and pathology.
Yet these techniques do not provide a direct biomarker (i.e. a clearly interpretable and reliable measure of disease state or progression). Rather, the clinically relevant information is a derived quantity, embedded in form of patterns and relationships, and often complemented by heterogeneous inputs. The measure - or quantification ? evolves from a simple act of counting to a complex mapping of human sense and observation.
We shall review some methodological key points in analysing neuroimaging data, focusing on three paradigmatic cases: longitudinal studies (structural MRI), coherence networks (multi-modal) and amyloid-PET semi-quantification approaches.