Dementia Japan 19：231-242, 2005

Imaging of brain atrophy using MRI :
Comparison of early Alzheimer’s disease with other dementia

Hiroshi Matsuda

Department of Nuclear Medicine, Saitama Medical School Hospital

　　Main purposes of neuroimaging in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) have been moved from diagnosis of advanced Alzheimer’s disease to diagnosis of very early AD at a prodromal stage of mild cognitive impairment, prediction of conversion from mild cognitive impairment to AD, and differential diagnosis of AD and other dementia.　Structural MRI studies are widely used in diagnosis of AD.　Outstanding progress in diagnostic accuracy of MRI has been obtained using statistical analysis on voxel-based morphometry after spatial normalization of individual scans to a standardized brain-volume template.　In a very early stage of Alzheimer’s disease, this statistical approach revealed gray matter loss in the entorhinal areas.　This computer-aided automatic technique may contribute to early diagnosis of AD and differential diagnosis.

Address correspondence to Dr. Hiroshi Matsuda, Department of Nuclear Medicine, Saitama Medical School Hospital (38, Morohongo, Moroyama-machi, Iruma-gun, Saitama 350-0495, Japan)