Super-res brain scan images offer dementia hopes
A HI-TECH brain scan has been developed that produces “super-resolution” images that could better detect early dementia.
Picture quality is currently often limited by patients’ movements during scanning.
But the new system adds an external motion-tracking device to existing positron emission tomography (PET) tech. It lets researchers harness the movements of a patient’s head to enhance the image quality of brain PET scans by measuring them with high precision.
The technique has yet to be used on humans but it holds promise for Alzheimer’s.
Yanis Chemli, at the US’s Gordon Centre for Medical Imaging, said: “Alzheimer’s disease is characterised by the presence of tangles composed of tau protein.
“These tangles start accumulating very early on in Alzheimer’s – sometimes decades before symptoms – in very small regions of the brain.
“The better we can image these small structures in the brain, the earlier we may be able to diagnose and, perhaps in the future, treat Alzheimer’s disease.”
The findings were presented to the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging.