Estimation of positron emission tomography amyloid load and related biomarkers in Alzheimer’s disease using evoked potential tomography EEG: development and internal validation in a cross-sectional cohort
BACKGROUND: Dementia affects over 50 million individuals globally, predominantly due to Alzheimer's disease (AD). Effective early detection and intervention remain clinical challenges, as there is a lack of unified, portable solutions to assess multiple biomarkers. METHODS: We evaluated Evoked Potential Tomography (EPT), an EEG-based method using a novel visual evoked potential protocol. An automated pipeline for EEG preprocessing, ERP extraction, feature selection, optimization, and regression modeling was developed to estimate key AD biomarkers: PET-amyloid standardized uptake value ratio (SUVR), CSF phosphorylated tau (p-tau181), Free and Cued Selective Reminding Test (FCSRT), and Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) scores. RESULTS: Regression models using ERP features from dementia participants demonstrated strong correlations (r = 0.8-0.94, p < 0.01) between predicted and true PET-amyloid SUVR, p-tau181, FCSRT, and MMSE values. In an independent external cohort, PET-amyloid SUVR predictions remained significantly associated with true values (r = 0.60, p < 0.01). DISCUSSION: Despite limitations, these preliminary results support EPT's potential as a sensitive and non-invasive method for estimating AD-related biomarkers in a clinically enriched AD cohort. Further validation studies are ongoing.
Authors
- O Pogarell
- Jesyin Lai (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1139-7675)
- Boris‐Stephan Rauchmann (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4547-6240)
- Carolin Kurz
- James Hamet
- Nicolai Franzmeier (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9736-2283)
- Matthias Brendel
- Homeira Kafi
- G Höglinger
- Joe Rexwinkle
- Robert Perneczky
- Johannes Levin
Institutions
- German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DE)
- LMU Klinikum (DE)
- Public Health England (GB)
- Munich Cluster for Systems Neurology (DE)
- Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (DE)
- University of Delaware (US)
- University of Gothenburg (SE)
- University of Sheffield (GB)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Alzheimer s Research & Therapy
- Published
- 2026-06-12
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1186/s13195-026-02076-7
- Primary Topic
- Dementia and Cognitive Impairment Research
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00