Improving the identification of retinal biomarkers of Alzheimer disease in vivo

阿尔茨海默病是一种缓慢发展的神经退行性疾病，最终会导致痴呆。它是痴呆症的最常见原因，影响着全世界数百万人，目前尚无治愈方法。开发新疗法的一个主要问题是，阿尔茨海默病的诊断通常是基于认知障碍，这是在疾病发展的后期做出的诊断。该提案旨在开发一种非侵入性检测工具，利用存在于大脑和眼睛中的阿尔茨海默病生物标志物之间的共性。我们的主要目标是通过在眼科检查期间例行进行的测试，尽早识别疾病的迹象。我们将开发将多光谱视网膜成像与图像处理相结合的方法，以识别视网膜中淀粉样斑块积累的生物标志物，并将结果与脑PET淀粉样蛋白成像相关联。

Alzheimers disease is a slowly evolving neurodegenerative disorder that ultimately leading todementia. It is the most common cause of dementia, affecting millions worldwide, with no cureavailable at this time. One of the main issues with developing new therapies is the fact thatAlzheimer is usually diagnosed based on cognitive impairments, a diagnosis made late in theevolution of the disease. This proposal aims to develop a non-invasive detection toolexploiting commonalities between Alzheimer biomarkers present both in the brain and theeye. Our main goal is to identify signs of the disease earlier using a test that could be doneroutinely during an ophthalmology examination. We will develop methods combiningmultispectral retinal imaging with image processing to identify biomarkers of amyloid plaqueaccumulation in the retina and correlate results with brain PET amyloid imaging.