Abstract #3053

Cervical spinal cord atrophy contributes to classification of Alzheimer’s disease and vascular dementia patients

Roberta Maria Lorenzi¹, Fulvia Palesi², Paolo Vitali², Alfredo Costa^3,4, Gloria Castellazzi^1,5, Elena Sinforiani⁶, Giuseppe Micieli⁷, Egidio D'Angelo^4,8, and Claudia A.M. Gandini Wheeler-Kingshott^4,5,9

¹Department of Electrical, Computer and Biomedical Engineering,University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy, ²Neuroradiology Unit, Brain MRI 3T Research Center, IRCCS Mondino Foundation, Pavia, Italy, ³Unit of Behavioral Neurology, IRCCS Mondino Foundation, Pavia, Italy, ⁴Department of Brain and Behavioural Sciences, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy, ⁵Queen Square MS Centre, Department of Neuroinflammation, UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology, Faculty of Brain Sciences, University College London, London, United Kingdom, ⁶Laboratory of Neuropsychology, IRCCS Mondino Foundation, Pavia, Italy, ⁷Department of Emergency Neurology, IRCCS Mondino Foundation, Pavia, Italy, ⁸Brain connectivity center (BCC), IRCCS Mondino Foundation, Pavia, Italy, ⁹Brain MRI 3T Research Center, IRCCS Mondino Foundation, Pavia, Italy

Brain atrophy is an established biomarker for dementia. Here we tested the hypothesis that spinal cord atrophy is also an important in vivo imaging biomarker for neurodegeneration associated with dementia. 3DT1 images of Alzheimer Disease, Vascular Dementia and healthy subjects were processed to calculate spinal cord morphological parameters, such as vertebral spinal cord cross sectional areas and volumes. We confirmed the presence of significant spinal cord atrophy in dementia compared to healthy subjects. In particular, the C2-C3 vertebrae area resulted to have a considerable weight both for discriminating and classifying Alzheimer Disease from Vascular Dementia and Healthy control subjects.

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