The use of fiber tractography for identifying patients with Alzheimer's disease

This study examined the usefulness of fiber tractography (FT) for identifying patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) through diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). DTI was performed on twelve patients with AD (four males and eight females, mean age: 78.1 +/- 7.5 years) and an eleven patients with MCI (five males and six females, mean age: 69.3 +/- 8.0 years) from January to December 2011 by using a 3.0T scanner. Two regions of interest were drawn on the pyramidal tract of Pons and the posterior limb of the internal capsule, which passed through both cortico spinal tracts on the color-cored fractional anisotropy (FA) map. The numbers of white matter fibers on the DTIs in the patients with AD and MCI were determined. The numbers of white matter fibers in the AD patients were 1055.67 +/- 333.12 and 860.75 +/- 355.50 on the left and the right, respectively. In the patients with MCI, the numbers of white matter fibers and were 1329.82 +/- 238.99 and 1316.55 +/- 215.25 on the left and the right, respectively. The difference between the right and the left sides in the AD patients was slightly higher than that in the MCI patients.