Exploration of MRI measures of neurodegeneration within individuals over short intervals

项目摘要/总结 阿尔茨海默病和其他形式的痴呆症影响着500多万美国人。阿尔茨海默病 从大脑的变化开始，在疾病可以从记忆中诊断出来之前十多年， 认知障碍的病人这项工作的目标是提供一种方法来衡量早期的迹象， 神经退行性疾病衡量个人变化的历史障碍是， 人的大脑是不同的，变化积累得太慢，不能在短时间内得到。因此，在本发明中， 大多数研究集中于跟踪平均受试者群体或跟踪多年的变化。的 目前的工作优化了新的大脑成像技术，使用MRI， 对同一个人的大脑区域进行重复测量。然后，这部作品试图利用小说 一种成像方法来测量阿尔茨海默病早期个体的神经变性， 几个月或更短的时间，也区分了阿尔茨海默病患者的变化与不常见的形式， 大脑有明显解剖学变化的痴呆症。如果成功，目前的工作将提供一个新的 这意味着跟踪神经变性的早期阶段，如将用于临床试验和翻译 医学研究

PROJECT ABSTRACT/SUMMARY Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia affect over five million Americans. Alzheimer's disease begins with changes in the brain more than a decade before the disease can be diagnosed from memory and cognitive impairment in a clinic. The goal of this work is to provide a way to measure early signs of neurodegeneration in individual people. The historical barrier to measure change in individuals is that each person's brain is different with change accumulating too slowly to be picked over short intervals. As a result, most research focuses on tracking averaged subject groups or tracking change over multiple years. The present work optimizes new brain imaging techniques using MRI to make extremely fast, highly precise repeated measurements of brain regions all within the same individual. The work then seeks to use the novel imaging approach to measure neurodegeneration in individuals with early stages of Alzheimer's disease in six months or less and also differentiate changes in people with Alzheimer's disease from less common forms of dementia that have distinct anatomical changes in the brain. If successful, the present work will provide a new means to track the early stages of neurodegeneration as would be used in clinical trials and translational medical research.