Diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease: Combined ASL Blood Flow Measurement and Morphometric Imaging

Takashi Yoshiura¹, Akio Hiwatashi¹, Koji Yamashita¹, Eiki Nagao¹, Hironori Kamano¹, Yukihisa Takayama¹, Osamu Togao¹, Tuvshinjargal Dashjamts¹, Tomoyuki Noguchi¹, Ivan Zimine¹, Tomoyuki Okuaki², Hiroshi Honda¹

We compared diagnostic performances of ASL CBF measurement, morphometric measurement and combined two methods in detecting Alzheimerfs disease (AD). Twenty AD patients and 23 healthy control subjects were studied using quantitative ASL and high-resolution structural imaging. Discrimination of AD patients from control subjects was performed based on mean CBF in the hypoperfused area and gray matter density in the atrophied region. Diagnostic accuracy for ASL CBF, gray matter density and their combination were 86.0%, 88.4% and 93.0 %, respectively. Results suggest combination of ASL CBF measurement and morphometric imaging can provide better diagnostic accuracy than either of the two alone.