Quantification of vascular and neuronal pathology in dementia using PET and MRI

我们老龄化人口中痴呆症发病率的增加是社会面临的紧迫挑战之一。早期准确的诊断对痴呆症患者的成功治疗有很大帮助。磁共振成像(MRI)和正电子发射断层扫描(PET)等成像方法已经在诊断过程中使用；我们认为这两种方法都有很大的改进空间，以提供更准确和敏感的诊断信息，并以患者容易容忍的方式这样做。如果我们的信念是正确的，那么我们在这个项目中开发的方法不仅有助于早期诊断，还可能有助于发现新的治疗方法，从长远来看，帮助医生为不同形式的痴呆患者选择最佳治疗策略。MRI和PET等成像方法可以告诉我们更多关于大脑的信息，而不仅仅是提供大脑形状和大小的图片。我们将专注于改进MRI和PET，使其对痴呆症的两个重要微观方面敏感。首先，我们将开发和验证新的方法来测量由于这种情况造成的脑细胞损失；这种损失是痴呆症许多症状的原因，如记忆问题，我们希望能够比以前更早地发现这些变化。其次，我们将开发和验证新的方法来衡量血液输送到大脑的变化，以及这如何影响氧气输送。这些变化被认为是导致细胞死亡和组织丢失的重要过程之一，可能与血管性痴呆特别相关。我们还将花费大量时间检查我们开发的测量方法是否准确，并在未来应用于痴呆症患者。我们将优化扫描过程的方式，以便将患者躺在扫描仪中所需的时间降至最低(S)。这对于将来在临床环境中采用这些方法将是重要的。

The increasing occurrence of dementia within our ageing population is one of the pressing challenges facing society. Successful management of patients with dementia is significantly aided by early and accurate diagnosis. Imaging methods such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) are already used in the diagnostic process; we believe that there is substantial scope for both methods to be improved to provide more precise and sensitive diagnostic information, and to do so in a way that is easily tolerated by patients. If we are correct in this belief, then the methods we develop within this project will not only help in early diagnosis, but may also help in the discovery of new therapies and in the longer term with helping doctors select the best therapeutic strategies for patients with different forms of dementia.Imaging methods such as MRI and PET can tell us a lot more about brains than simply providing a picture of brain shape and size. We will focus on improving MRI and PET to be sensitive to two important microscopic aspects of dementia. Firstly, we will develop and validate new methods for measuring the loss of brain cells due to the condition; this loss is the cause of many of the symptoms of dementia, such as memory problems, and we hope to be able to detect these changes earlier than has previously been possible. Secondly we will develop and validate new methods for measuring changes in blood delivery to the brain and how this can affect oxygen delivery. These changes are thought to be part of one of the important processes involved in causing cell death and tissue loss, and are likely to be particularly relevant to vascular dementia.We will also spend considerable time checking that the measurements we develop are both accurate and practical for application in dementia patients in the future. We will optimise the way in which the scanning processes take place so that the time required for patients to lie in the scanner(s) is minimised. This will be important for future adoption of these methods in the clinical environment.