AD/PD 2022 International Conference on Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Diseases
AUTHORS: Agnès Pérez-Millan, José Contador, Neus Falgàs, Núria Bargalló, Mircea Balasa, Albert Lladó, Raquel Sanchez- Valle, Roser Sala-Llonch
TITLE: Using age-matched templates to depict patterns of atrophy in AD and FTD.
CONFERENCE: AD/PD 2022 International Conference on Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Diseases
PLACE: Barcelona, Spain
DATES: March 15 - 20, 2022
ABSTRACT:
OBJECTIVES: Alzheimer Disease (AD) and Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD) are characterized by progressive brain atrophy at variable rates along the age continuum. We suggest using normative tem-plates according of cortical thickness (CTh) within different age ranges.
METHODS: We studied 497 MRIs of healthy controls (CTR), Early Onset AD (EOAD), Late Onset AD (LOAD) and FTD patients. Subjects were grouped according to age: [45-54 years] (21 CTR, 17 EOAD, 13 FTD), [55-64 years] (93 CTR, 77 EOAD, 63 FTD), [65-74 years] (73 CTR, 7 EOAD, 43 LOAD, 37 FTD) and [75-84 years] (15 CTR, 28 LOAD, 10 FTD). We obtained regional CTh and we generated group-normative maps using the mean and standard deviation (SD) of CTR. Then, Z scores were estimated as Zregion = (CThregion-CTh(CTRmean))/CTh(CTRSD) for each patient with its corre-sponding template. We compared these maps as well as global values at each age range.
RESULTS: AD and FTD showed brain atrophy compared to CTR at all age groups. The effects of atrophy for both diseases with respect to CTR were stronger at younger ages (Figure 1). We describe differences between AD and FTD along the aging continuum with different patterns across ages (Fig-ure 2).
CONCLUSION: We highlight the necessity of using age-matched templates to identify changes across the disease timeline for AD and FTD. At younger ages, EOAD and FTD had partly overlap-ping brain signatures. At older ages, LOAD and FTD clearly show a different pattern. These patterns can be used to support the differential diagnosis of these dementias.