S.Bagnasco, B.Canesi, P.Cerello, M.Fato, E.Molinari, A.Schenone, L.Torterolo

Alzheimer’ s Disease (AD) is the leading cause of dementia, accounting for more than half of all dementias in elderly people. Clinically, AD is characterized by a progressive loss of cognitive abilities, the memory loss typically being the earliest sign of the disease.
The qualitative analysis of medical images does not provide useful suggestions for the diagnosis in AD. However, a statistical comparison of PET/SPECT images from suspect AD patients with images from normal cases is a powerful tool for an early diagnosis. The use of Statistical Parametric Mapping Analysis (SPM) for the quantification of hypometabolic atterns in brain PET/SPECT studies has been proposed in literature, and the SPM software library, originally developed at the Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience (London University College), is currently the standard within the neurological research community with regards to an analysis of PET/SPECT studies for the early diagnosis of AD.