Automated MRI-Based Quantification of the Cerebral Atrophy Providing Diagnostic Information on Mild Cognitive Impairment and Alzheimer´s Disease

Alzheimer´s disease (AD) is a major public health challenge as the median age of the industrialized world´s population is increasing gradually. No cure for this disease has yet been found and the development of new treatments has become a topic of major research interest. This paper aims to propose a sequence of fully automated MRI-based image analysis steps to measure the development stage of atrophy in the brain. The results have been validated on a mixed group of 68 subjects by distinguishing between AD patients, MCIs and health controls using linear classifiers and ANNs. The best classifier identified unseen AD patients correctly in 80% of the cases and control subjects in 85%. Recognizing more than 8 out of 10 MCI subjects, the method also yields an early indication of AD. This simple yet powerful analysis can compete with other more time-consuming and semi-automatic methodologies. It could abet an AD diagnosis and provide a tool for measuring the success of therapies