FDG-PET Helps Detect Alzheimer’s Disease

Images of the brain using FDG-PET can accurately detect Alzheimer's disease in patients presenting with primary progressive aphasia or corticobasal syndrome as focal onset dementias, according to a study published in The Journal of Nuclear Medicine.

Authors from the United States, Japan, and Australia sought to determine the accuracy of FDG-PET metabolic imaging when detecting Alzheimer’s disease among patients with primary progressive aphasia or corticobasal syndrome.

A total of 94 subjects participated in the study, including subjects who were diagnosed with:

• Logopenic aphasia, 19 subjects

• Non-fluent aphasia, 16 subjects

• Semantic aphasia, 13 subjects[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_crop","fid":"41084","attributes":{"alt":"PET CT","class":"media-image media-image-right","id":"media_crop_6997834934021","media_crop_h":"0","media_crop_image_style":"-1","media_crop_instance":"4285","media_crop_rotate":"0","media_crop_scale_h":"0","media_crop_scale_w":"0","media_crop_w":"0","media_crop_x":"0","media_crop_y":"0","style":"height: 113px; width: 151px; border-width: 0px; border-style: solid; margin: 1px; float: right;","title":" ","typeof":"foaf:Image"}}]]

• Corticobasal syndrome, 14 subjects

• Alzheimer's disease, 24 subjects

All underwent F18-FDG metabolic and C11-PiB amyloid PET brain imaging. The FDG-PET scans that were read with Neurostat 3D-SSP software displays were classified as Alzheimer's disease or other by readers blind to the clinical assessments and PiB-PET results.

The results showed 84% accuracy for subjects who were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease based on FDG-PET results. However, diagnoses based on clinical assessment resulted in only 65% conventional and 67% balanced accuracy.

The researchers concluded, “Brain FDG-PET scans read with Neurostat 3D-SSP displays accurately detect Alzheimer's disease in patients presenting with primary progressive aphasia or corticobasal syndrome as focal onset dementias. In these diagnostically challenging cohorts, FDG-PET imaging can provide more accurate diagnoses enabling more appropriate therapy.”