“Diagnosing dementia is a complex challenge, and doctors have to gather a range of clues to create a picture of what is going on in the brain,” Dr. David Reynolds, chief scientific officer at Alzheimer’s Research UK told the Telegraph.

Noting that the new research “highlights” the value of amyloid brain scans, he advised that they can improve diagnoses, “either by indicating or ruling out Alzheimer’s as the possible cause of someone’s dementia symptoms.”


In June, German researchers reported at the SNMMI 2017 meeting in Denver that less testing was needed when using dual time-point PET imaging to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease.

“We were motivated to conduct this research by the facts that Alzheimer’s disease is a growing health care concern, that it is known that imaging-based and other biomarkers can support Alzheimer’s diagnosis, and that so far the imaging-based acquisition of both Alzheimer’s biomarker categories (amyloid pathology and neuronal injury) requires two separate imaging sessions,” Dr. Henryk Barthel, assistant medical director at the Department of Nuclear medicine at the University of Leipzig, told HCB News.

“With our research we show that it might be possible in the future to obtain this dual Alzheimer’s biomarker information out of the application of one single PET tracer by imaging the patient’s brain in dual time-windows within one session,” Barthel said. “This approach will increase patient convenience and might increase patients' and caregivers' acceptance of the diagnosis.”

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