Researchers at the San Francisco VA Medical Center and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), have developed an MRI technique that may predict the rate of progression and physical path of many degenerative brain diseases.
Led by Dr. Bruce Miller, clinical director of the UCSF Memory and Aging Center, the results confirm that dementia spreads through the brain along specific neuronal pathways.
By using new computer modeling techniques, Miller and colleagues were able to predict the physical progression of Alzheimer's disease and frontotemporal dementia using MR images of 14 healthy brains.
The models are based on whole-brain tractography, an MRI technique that maps the neural pathways that connect different areas of the brain. The spread of disease along those pathways closely matches MR images of brain degeneration in 18 Alzheimer's patients and 18 frontotemporal dementia patients.
Study co-author Dr. Michael Weiner, director of the VA's Center for Imaging of Neurodegenerative Diseases, said the results need to be replicated, but suggest this approach could predict the location and course of future brain atrophy in Alzheimer's, frontotemporal dementia, and other degenerative brain diseases, based on just one MRI scan taken at the outset of the disease.
