M4A  MIC Plenary and 2015 Hasegawa Award Lecture

Thursday, Nov. 5  08:30-10:00  Golden Pacific Ballroom

Session Chair:  Adam Alessio, University of Washington, United States; Lawrence MacDonald, University of Washington, United States

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(08:30) M4A-1, Acceptance Lecture for 2015 Bruce H Hasegawa Young Investigator Medical Imaging Science Award

S. Y. Chun

Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), Ulsan, Republic of Korea
Introduce Hasegawa Recipient (Georges El Fakhri) Acceptance Lecture for 2015 Bruce H Hasegawa Young Investigator Medical Imaging Science Award Se Young Chun, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST)

(09:10) M4A-2, Molecular Imaging Endophenotypes in Dementia

K. A. Frey

Radiology and Neurology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
Dementia is a leading cause of health care expenditure, morbidity and mortality in developed nations throughout the world. Despite increasing understanding of molecular pathology in the major dementia syndromes, there has been limited progress in the discovery of new therapy; particularly lacking are effective disease-modifying treatments to slow or arrest neurodegeneration. Advances in molecular neuroimaging allow the non-invasive imaging of major dementia pathologies, and should permit improved diagnosis and classification of patients in therapeutic trials. Imaging of subjects early in the course of dementia syndromes has potential to reveal the cascade of events leading to behavioral symptoms and signs. In our laboratory, we have explored classifications of dementia patients according to the patterns of amyloid deposition and nigrostriatal projection integrity, identifying subgroups with Alzheimer disease (AD), dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) and frontotemporal dementias (FTD). In a prospective study we determined a 35% discordance between clinical diagnostic classifications and the molecular image endophenotyping. Follow-up of subjects at autopsy confirms accuracy of the molecular imaging classifications. In a subset of subjects, additional clinical diagnostic imaging of cerebral glucose metabolism with [18F]fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) revealed discordant classification in a number of patients with an “FTD” FDG pattern, who were classified on molecular endophenotype imaging as AD, confirmed at autopsy. These findings, as well as emerging patterns and interactions among molecular imaging measures, suggest an important role for molecular neuroimaging in dementia at present and moving forward in the search for effective therapy.