Alzheimer Disease Imaging in the Era of Anti-Amyloid Treatment

Abstract

The landscape of diagnostic evaluation and treatment of Alzheimer disease (AD) is rapidly changing. While there is still no cure for AD, recent developments are bringing increased hope to the millions of Americans suffering from this progressively debilitating condition. Here we offer an overview of recent regulatory, treatment, and imaging developments that promise to significantly impact AD patients, their families, their physicians, and neuroimaging specialists. An estimated 6.7 million Americans suffer from AD, which doubles in prevalence every five years after the age of 65.1,2 One in three seniors will die of dementia.1 Since 2000, death from heart disease has decreased by 7%, but death from AD has increased by 145%.1 Conventional and quantitative brain MRI, as well as fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG), amyloid, and tau PET are utilized in the evaluation and clinical care pathway for dementia patients (Figures 1-4). With the recent emergence of disease-modifying therapies (DMT) for AD, neuroradiologists will play a critical role in the detection and characterization of treatment-related complications.