RSNA News - April 2005

Groundbreaking Alzheimer Disease Neuroimaging Trial Begins

Anterior view of the anatomical sub-volume probabilistic atlas (ASVPA) of the Alzheimer disease (AD) population

The ASVPA atlas was obtained by merging a large family of AD subjects' MRI volumes into a common reference space using stereo-tacticaffine registration. Then to every voxel within the ASVPA atlas a probability value is assigned to represent the chance this voxel belongs to a particular anatomical region of interest across the entire family of AD subjects. White matter, gray matter and CSF are modeled separately within the 180 regions of interest. The green and blue colors on this snapshot indicate the average distribution of the CSF and gray matter, respectively, across the AD population.

Courtesy of Dr. Arthur W. Toga, Laboratory of Neuro Imaging

Preclinical AD	Mild to Mmoderate AD	Severe AD
Illustrations of the various stages of AD. The blue indicates affected areas.

AD Tangle

Over the last few years, scientists have been giving an increasing amount of attention to tau, another hallmark of AD. This protein is commonly found in nerve cells throughout the brain. In AD, tau undergoes changes that cause it to gather together abnormally in tangled filaments in neurons.

Image courtesy of NIA

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