Exploration of MRI measures of neurodegeneration within individuals over short intervals

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.

Grant Number: 5R01AG067420-05
NIH Institute/Center: NIH
Principal Investigator: RANDY BUCKNER