U researchers have found that a new type of X-ray software has a better chance of showing which type of dementia a patient has.
A study conducted by Norman Foster, a professor at the U’s Alzheimer Center, and a team of clinical experts on dementia found that the software can better detect the difference between Alzheimer’s and Frontotemporal dementia, dementia or diseases that affect brain functions.
“Dr. Foster trained six dementia experts to understand the results of cases from a PET scan,” said Edward Zamrini, an associate professor of neurology at the U and colleague of Norman Foster. “He found them to be more confident of which case involved Alzheimer’s and which involved FTD.”
The computer software reads the scans and evaluates brain activity, looking for the primary areas of damage in the brain. The program was developed by Satoshi Minoshima, a radiology professor from the University of Washington. Minoshima and Foster worked together on understanding images of brain scans for dementia patients.
The six experts studied 45 deceased dementia patients. Using average clinical methods to figure out which dementia patients had suffered from Alzheimer’s and which ones from FTD, the experts were about 75 percent correct in their diagnoses.
By using the improved software, the experts were able to correctly diagnose a patient’s dementia more than 85 percent of the time.
Alzheimer’s and FTD are similar in many ways and can be hard to differentiate, Zamrini said.
Patients with FTD usually experience problems in their 40s and 50s and have a 30 percent chance of passing it on to family members, whereas Alzheimer’s occurs in patients who are older than 65 and is rarely genetic. Drug treatment for the two types of dementia is not the same, and giving treatment for one type of dementia to the other type can have negative side effects.
“There’s a new treatment for Alzheimer’s that causes beta-amylodes in the body to unclump,” Zamrini said. “If it were given to an FTD patient, at best, it would just empty their pockets, at worse, it could cause upset stomach, nausea and vomiting.”
By diagnosing FTD earlier, patients can avoid mistreatment from receiving the wrong drugs, Foster said in a statement.
Although the study shows that the software program could positively impact the way patients are diagnosed and treated for dementia, Nina Silverberg recommends that a follow up study be done.
“The study, as it was done, used experts, but most of the physicians who will see dementia patients aren’t experts,” said Silverberg, the assistant director for the national Alzheimer’s Disease Program.
Minoshima said that the software does not require experts to use it. The software makes the different types of dementia easier to recognize, he said.
Scans notice the abnormalities of different types of dementia by tracking neuron activity in the brain. The software program then takes the data and gives physicians the ability to visualize the distribution of brain activity in 3-D, Minoshima said.
Foster’s study appeared online in the journal Brain. Information and funding for the study came from the National Institutes on Aging.