Exploratory Multi-parametric Analysis of Biomarker Confirmed Alzheimer’s Disease Patients with Cognitive Impairment vs Normal Controls

Motivation: Alzheimer's disease(AD) poses a serious public health and economic challenge, with urgent needs for reliable biomarkers for early disease and therapeutic monitoring. Goal(s): Evaluate differences in MRI metrics in small cohort of biomarker confirmed cognitively impaired(CI) AD patients and normal controls(CN). Approach: Four CI and four CN individuals were imaged using anatomic, chemical exchange saturation transfer(CEST) and arterial spin labeling(ASL) sequences. Regional cortical thickness, cerebral blood flow, and CEST metrics were compared. Results: We identified regional metric differences(p<0.05) as well as rank ordered metrics ability to predict CI. The top metric was CEST based, and 9 of the top 10 were CEST based. Impact: The successful implementation of MRI metrics in AD patients could lead to more timely interventions, guide therapeutic strategies, improve patient outcomes, and decrease the overall healthcare cost.