Tools for fully automated volumetric measurement of cerebral atrophy from MRI ready for routine clinical practice in diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease

Abstract

Hippocampal atrophy is the best validated biomarker of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and can be detected quantitatively by volumetric magnetic resonance imaging (vMRI). Fully automated vMRI software was developed to overcome many clinical translating hurdles of the manual and semi-automated methods. However, there are no data of sensitivity and specificity of vMRI to be used as a tool to diagnose AD in general clinical setting.  Moreover, the hippocampal atrophy can be found in various neurological conditions with memory impairments, not only the AD. This hippocampal atrophy results from vMRI should be accompanied by/with the clinical evaluation rather than be used alone.