February 19, 2015

MRI and PET tackle Alzheimer's diagnostics

A new window into the development of Alzheimer’s disease may have been opened up by researchers in Germany who have combined two non-invasive imaging techniques to study the formation of proteinaceous deposits known as β-amyloid plaques. Using both PET and MRI, the researchers followed the development of amyloid plaques in the brains of mice that have a similar disease, and found a direct connection between the plaques’ formation in cerebral blood vessels and reduced blood flow in the brain (Nature Medicine 20 1485). {read more here}