Molecular imaging in early diagnosis, differential diagnosis and follow-up of patients with neurodegenerative diseases

Abstract

Purpose

Current disease models suggest that many neurodegenerative disorders are associated with pathological protein aggregations that start to develop in the brain long before the onset of clinical symptoms. Therefore, biomarkers allowing early and reliable characterization of neurodegenerative disease are required. Here we illustrate the potential value of neuroimaging procedures by means of selected examples.

Methods

Multimodal imaging data of exemplary patients who underwent FDG, Amyloid and AV-1451-PET, FP-CIT-SPECT and MRI imaging in the routine clinical workup in our department is presented and the currently available literature on the topic of imaging in neurodegenerative diseases was reviewed.

Results

The complementary value of the applied imaging methods is demonstrated in pairs of representative cases. Depending on the clinical question, individual methods or a meaningful multimodal combination is required to achieve optimal diagnostic benefit.

Conclusion

Imaging biomarkers have high potential for early diagnosis, differential diagnosis and follow-up of patients with neurodegenerative diseases already and will gain an even higher importance in the future, when specific pathology-targeted therapies will be evaluated in clinical trials.

from # All Medicine by Alexandros G. Sfakianakis via Alexandros G.Sfakianakis on Inoreader http://ift.tt/2vmrxQH
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