scholarly journals The Progress of Label-Free Optical Imaging in Alzheimer’s Disease Screening and Diagnosis

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kai Liu ◽  
Jiasong Li ◽  
Raksha Raghunathan ◽  
Hong Zhao ◽  
Xuping Li ◽  
...  

As the major neurodegenerative disease of dementia, Alzheimer’s disease (AD) has caused an enormous social and economic burden on society. Currently, AD has neither clear pathogenesis nor effective treatments. Positron emission tomography (PET) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) have been verified as potential tools for diagnosing and monitoring Alzheimer’s disease. However, the high costs, low spatial resolution, and long acquisition time limit their broad clinical utilization. The gold standard of AD diagnosis routinely used in research is imaging AD biomarkers with dyes or other reagents, which are unsuitable for in vivo studies owing to their potential toxicity and prolonged and costly process of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for human use. Furthermore, these exogenous reagents might bring unwarranted interference to mechanistic studies, causing unreliable results. Several label-free optical imaging techniques, such as infrared spectroscopic imaging (IRSI), Raman spectroscopic imaging (RSI), optical coherence tomography (OCT), autofluorescence imaging (AFI), optical harmonic generation imaging (OHGI), etc., have been developed to circumvent this issue and made it possible to offer an accurate and detailed analysis of AD biomarkers. In this review, we present the emerging label-free optical imaging techniques and their applications in AD, along with their potential and challenges in AD diagnosis.

Biosensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 255
Author(s):  
Ziyi Luo ◽  
Hao Xu ◽  
Liwei Liu ◽  
Tymish Y. Ohulchanskyy ◽  
Junle Qu

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a multifactorial, irreversible, and incurable neurodegenerative disease. The main pathological feature of AD is the deposition of misfolded β-amyloid protein (Aβ) plaques in the brain. The abnormal accumulation of Aβ plaques leads to the loss of some neuron functions, further causing the neuron entanglement and the corresponding functional damage, which has a great impact on memory and cognitive functions. Hence, studying the accumulation mechanism of Aβ in the brain and its effect on other tissues is of great significance for the early diagnosis of AD. The current clinical studies of Aβ accumulation mainly rely on medical imaging techniques, which have some deficiencies in sensitivity and specificity. Optical imaging has recently become a research hotspot in the medical field and clinical applications, manifesting noninvasiveness, high sensitivity, absence of ionizing radiation, high contrast, and spatial resolution. Moreover, it is now emerging as a promising tool for the diagnosis and study of Aβ buildup. This review focuses on the application of the optical imaging technique for the determination of Aβ plaques in AD research. In addition, recent advances and key operational applications are discussed.


2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (12) ◽  
pp. 3702 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grazia Femminella ◽  
Tony Thayanandan ◽  
Valeria Calsolaro ◽  
Klara Komici ◽  
Giuseppe Rengo ◽  
...  

Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia and is a significant burden for affected patients, carers, and health systems. Great advances have been made in understanding its pathophysiology, to a point that we are moving from a purely clinical diagnosis to a biological one based on the use of biomarkers. Among those, imaging biomarkers are invaluable in Alzheimer’s, as they provide an in vivo window to the pathological processes occurring in Alzheimer’s brain. While some imaging techniques are still under evaluation in the research setting, some have reached widespread clinical use. In this review, we provide an overview of the most commonly used imaging biomarkers in Alzheimer’s disease, from molecular PET imaging to structural MRI, emphasising the concept that multimodal imaging would likely prove to be the optimal tool in the future of Alzheimer’s research and clinical practice.


2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timo Grimmer ◽  
Oliver Goldhardt ◽  
Igor Yakushev ◽  
Marion Ortner ◽  
Christian Sorg ◽  
...  

Background: Neprilysin (NEP) cleaves amyloid-β 1–42 (Aβ42) in the brain. Hence, we aimed to elucidate the effect of NEP on Aβ42 in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and on in vivo brain amyloid load using amyloid positron emission tomography (PET) with [11C]PiB (Pittsburgh compound B). In addition, associations with the biomarkers for neuronal injury, CSF-tau and FDG-PET, were investigated. Methods: Associations were calculated using global and voxel-based (SPM8) linear regression analyses in the same cohort of 23 highly characterized Alzheimer’s disease patients. Results: CSF-NEP was significantly inversely associated with CSF-Aβ42 and positively with the extent of neuronal injury as measured by CSF-tau and FDG-PET. Conclusions: Our results on CSF-NEP are compatible with the assumption that local degradation, amongst other mechanisms of amyloid clearance, plays a role in the development of Alzheimer’s pathology. In addition, CSF-NEP is associated with the extent and the rate of neurodegeneration.


2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 390-402 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Bastin ◽  
Mohamed Ali Bahri ◽  
François Meyer ◽  
Marine Manard ◽  
Emma Delhaye ◽  
...  

2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (7S_Part_1) ◽  
pp. P26-P27
Author(s):  
Jonatan A. Snir ◽  
Mojmir Suchy ◽  
Geron A. Bindseil ◽  
Blaine A. Chronik ◽  
Robert H.E. Hudson ◽  
...  

2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (7S_Part_3) ◽  
pp. P128-P128
Author(s):  
Jonatan A. Snir ◽  
Mojmir Suchy ◽  
Geron A. Bindseil ◽  
Blaine A. Chronik ◽  
Robert H.E. Hudson ◽  
...  

2006 ◽  
Vol 18 (s1) ◽  
pp. S3-S16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agneta Nordberg

The pathological processes that lead to Alzheimer's disease (AD) begin decades before the onset of dementia. Brain abnormalities in genetically susceptible individuals have been observed even in young adults. Patients with AD differ from normal elderly patients in brain morphology and neurochemistry. Important observations include increasing appearance of amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles, progressive loss of hippocampal volume, reduced cerebral glucose utilization, inflammatory processes, glial activation, and impairment of cholinergic function with losses of nicotinic acetylcholine receptors. These changes appear to begin in the asymptomatic stages and continue as cognition and then function and behavior are disrupted. Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) may be the first cognitive manifestation of this pathogenic process moderated by ongoing compensatory neurochemical mechanisms in the cholinergic system. Recent advances in positron emission tomography imaging techniques, including the development of the Pittsburgh B compound (PIB), allow in vivo visualization of amyloid plaques. These techniques have the potential to enable brain amyloid load to be monitored over time and to be related to brain function. Emerging evidence suggests that β-amyloid may interact with nicotinic receptors. This interaction may have clinically significant downstream effects and may mediate amyloid neurotoxicity. The cholinesterase inhibitors may have multiple actions, depending on the stage of the disease, from very mild to severe.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (524) ◽  
pp. eaau5732 ◽  
Author(s):  
Renaud La Joie ◽  
Adrienne V. Visani ◽  
Suzanne L. Baker ◽  
Jesse A. Brown ◽  
Viktoriya Bourakova ◽  
...  

β-Amyloid plaques and tau-containing neurofibrillary tangles are the two neuropathological hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and are thought to play crucial roles in a neurodegenerative cascade leading to dementia. Both lesions can now be visualized in vivo using positron emission tomography (PET) radiotracers, opening new opportunities to study disease mechanisms and improve patients’ diagnostic and prognostic evaluation. In a group of 32 patients at early symptomatic AD stages, we tested whether β-amyloid and tau-PET could predict subsequent brain atrophy measured using longitudinal magnetic resonance imaging acquired at the time of PET and 15 months later. Quantitative analyses showed that the global intensity of tau-PET, but not β-amyloid–PET, signal predicted the rate of subsequent atrophy, independent of baseline cortical thickness. Additional investigations demonstrated that the specific distribution of tau-PET signal was a strong indicator of the topography of future atrophy at the single patient level and that the relationship between baseline tau-PET and subsequent atrophy was particularly strong in younger patients. These data support disease models in which tau pathology is a major driver of local neurodegeneration and highlight the relevance of tau-PET as a precision medicine tool to help predict individual patient’s progression and design future clinical trials.


Nanoscale ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (7) ◽  
pp. 3561-3565 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sung Sik Lee ◽  
Luke P. Lee

We utilize nanoplasmonic optical imaging as the noninvasive and label-free method in order to monitorin vitroamyloid fibrogenesis in real-time, which is considered as the primary pathological mechanism of Alzheimer's disease.


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