Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurological degenerative disease that causes
a progressive cognitive deterioration, being the main cause of dementia in elderly
people at present. The diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease can be made with great
precision through the use of clinical, neuropsychological and imaging evaluations,
being of vital importance an early diagnosis to establish a treatment that improves the
prognosis in these patients. From the neuroimaging point of view, magnetic resonance
imaging (MRI) or computed tomography (CT) is recommended for the routine
assessment of AD. MRI sequences in the coronal plane assess entorhinal and
hippocampal cortical atrophy, typical at the onset of the disease. MRI volumetric
sequences and subtraction are used in the evaluation of the progression of dementia.
Positron emission tomography (PET) and single photon emission computed
tomography (SPECT) are used to evaluate the prognosis of patients and in the
differential diagnosis with other dementias. PET also serves to assess small visible
alterations in very early stages, asymptomatic inclusions of the disease and in patients
with predisposing genes to suffer AD.
Keywords: Alzheimer`s disease(AD), neuroimaging, magnetic resonance
imaging(MRI), computed tomography (CT), Positron emission tomography
(PET), single photon emission CT (SPECT), brain atrophy, hippocampal atrophy,
MRI Spectroscopy, Arterial Espin Labeling RM (ASL), Regional cerebral
perfusion studies.
