Single Brain Scan Can Diagnose Alzheimer’s Disease Quickly and Accurately

upstart writes:

Single Brain Scan Can Diagnose Alzheimer's Disease Quickly and Accurately:

A new machine learning algorithm can diagnose Alzheimer's disease from a single MRI brain scan, using a standard MRI machine available in most hospitals.

New research breakthrough uses machine learning technology to look at structural features within the brain, including in regions not previously associated with Alzheimer's. The advantage of the technique is its simplicity and the fact that it can identify the disease at an early stage when it can be very difficult to diagnose.

Although there is no cure for Alzheimer's disease, getting a diagnosis quickly at an early stage helps patients. It allows them to access help and support, get treatment to manage their symptoms and plan for the future. Being able to accurately identify patients at an early stage of the disease will also help researchers to understand the brain changes that trigger the disease, and support development and trials of new treatments.

[...] The researchers adapted an algorithm developed for use in classifying cancer tumors and applied it to the brain. They divided the brain into 115 regions and allocated 660 different features, such as size, shape, and texture, to assess each region. They then trained the algorithm to identify where changes to these features could accurately predict the existence of Alzheimer's disease.

[...] They found that in 98 percent of cases, the MRI-based machine learning system alone could accurately predict whether the patient had Alzheimer's disease or not. It was also able to distinguish between early and late-stage Alzheimer's with fairly high accuracy, in 79 percent of patients.

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