Development of automated delineation algorithm of reference regions for amyloid imaging. - Considering time information and the number of clusters -

Abstract

In Alzheimer's disease (AD) amyloid-β (Aβ) depositions disturbs neurons irreversibly, and early treatment before occurrence of dementia is important for AD treatments. This study aims at proposing an automated delineation algorithm for reference regions (AutoRef) for Aβ accumulation quantification. This presentation focuses on merits of a limited temporal information and the increased number clusters. As a result, for 86 clinical data (43 cases of AD, 33 cases of normal and 10 cases of equivocal deposition of Aβ), AutoRef succeeded in delineating the reference region for all the data. There was no significant difference (p < 0.05) between AutoRef and manually delineated reference region by a physician. The standard deviation of the difference between them was smaller than the discrimination threshold of AD used in actual clinical practice. In conclusions, the effectiveness of this study was suggested.