Categories

Several studies and new techniques are coming to the forefront every day with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The MRIs are assisting researchers to discover brain changes much earlier in Alzheimer's disease patients to facilitate earlier treatments. Other MRI research is helping scientists learn how the disease is progressing, according to the most recent International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease in Chicago. What made this conference interesting was that for the first time conventional, clinical-strength MRIs are capturing images of brain plaques with Alzheimer's-like dementia in them.

Scientists are always looking for the earliest signs of Alzheimer's disease they can, including cognitive and behavioral testing and assorted types of scans—MRIs and PET scans—with the PET scans consisting of injections of certain chemicals lighting up the brain for image processing. Unfortunately, up until recently the only definitive diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease was after a patient died, made through the identification process of brain lesions called "amyloid plazues." These lesions are now being observed through MRI brain scans with new research allowing signs of the disease, sooner than the first clinical signs of Alzheimer's could occur.

NEW TYPE OF MRI MACHINE

What has been found in Alzheimer's disease with the new MRI is that the build-up of certain proteins will lead to brain cell and brain tissue death. The area which is the most affected is thehippocampus, the area which affects memory. Located in the medial temporal lobe of the brain, this brain structure area belongs to the limbic system and plays a major role in spatial navigationand short term memory. Measuring the hippocampus is now allowing researches a better idea of what individuals will progress to Alzheimer's disease than having to measure the entire brain.

A new type of MRI machine has been developed which will eventually pave the way for an earlier treatment of Alzheimer's disease. French researchers are now using their latest MRI technology under a new automated system that measures brain tissue loss. This new testing procedure is able to diagnose not only Alzheimer's disease but forms of mild cognitive impairment, finding that people with the impairment may eventually develop dementia.

ABOUT THE MRI

The MRI machine is used as one of the imaging MRI – the (nuclear) magnetic resonance imaging machine uses two things to obtain images: radio waves and a strong magnetic field. Based on the physical and chemical properties of nuclear magnetic resonance, it is a technique used to obtain information about the molecules and their nature.  As a person lies on a narrow table which slides into the tube-shaped MRI machine, the machine will exhibit a "clanging" noise from gradient magnets while emitting a radiofrequency.

With the primary magnetic consisting of coils of wire bathed in liquid helium, it is 450 degrees F below zero which allows the coils to develop a magnetic field of 1.5 to 3  Tesla. Powerful, it is 20,000 stronger than the magnetic field of Earth. The gradient magnets are smaller ones within the machine, but allow for the preciseness of the machine to obtain "slices" of the particular body spot being focused on—in this case, the brain.