Postmortem MRI and Histopathology of White Matter Changes in Alzheimer Brains

Abstract

To evaluate whether magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of white matter changes in Alzheimer’s disease either under- or overestimates the findings on neuropathology. Postmortem MRI and neuropathological examination were performed on 6 brains from elderly individuals with a postmortem diagnosis of AD. Using a specially designed brain slicer, the brains were cut corresponding to the MRI images, and stained by Luxol Fast Blue. Quantitative analysis of white matter changes on MRI and neuropathology was performed using stereological principles. Measures from MRI and pathology were highly correlated (r² = 0.71). However, pathology showed significantly more extensive changes than did MRI in all cases, with a mean of 54% larger areas. The lesions not identified with MRI represented, however, only minor changes with lower intensity of myelin staining and with an accentuation of the distance between fibres but with preserved axonal network and glial cell density.

In Vivo Structural Neuroanatomy of Corpus Callosum in Alzheimer's Disease and Mild Cognitive Impairment Using Different MRI Techniques: A Review

“…In general, to perform a ROI analysis a high spatial resolution 3D brain sequence has to be acquired with an isotropic voxel (e.g., 1 × 1 × 1 mm 3 ), so that all three orthogonal planes can be inspected. This procedure also facilitates identification of anatomical landmarks for selection of the ROI.…”

“…Each ROI is identified by its landmarks and manually mapped. Then the voxels belonging to the ROI are colored to show the volume of the CC in mm 3 . According to the model used, an automatic procedure is applied to split the CC.…”

“…Although research in the field of Alzheimer's disease (AD) has basically focused on gray matter (GM) de-generation, a number of investigations have also documented a general white matter (WM) pathology associated with AD [1][2][3][4][5][6]. The corpus callosum (CC) has been implicated in this process [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21].…”

A Comparative Analysis of Structural Brain MRI in the Diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease

“…Etiology of WMHs is commonly ascribed to normal aging and cerebrovascular disease, even among subjects diagnosed with probable AD [14,34]. Yet growing evidence indicates neurodegenerative processes, such as gliosis, microglial infiltration, inflammation, and amyloid angiopathy can generate WMHs [3,7,11,16,41]. Diverse etiologies and underlying neuropathologies [16], as well as coexisting and mutually synergistic effects of vascular and degenerative disease [6,21,37] may confound efforts to characterize a relationship between WMHs, MTA, and AD.…”

Computer-aided differential diagnosis system for Alzheimer’s disease based on machine learning with functional and morphological image features in magnetic resonance imaging

“…AD is associated with morphological and functional changes, i.e., the atrophy of gray matter in the cerebral cortex, and the decrease of cerebral blood flow (CBF) in specific cerebral regions which can be evaluated with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and nuclear medicine examinations obtained by positron-emission tomography (PET) or single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]. However, the examinations by PET and SPECT are more expensive and invasive than those using MRI.…”