Structural covariance of white matter by diffusion tensor imaging on patients with mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer Disease

• Grant number: 19/26933-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: May 01, 2020
• End date: October 31, 2020
• Field of knowledge: Health Sciences - Medicine
• Principal Investigator: Marcio Luiz Figueredo Balthazar
• Grantee: Jaime Lage Vidal Junior
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências Médicas (FCM). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 18/15571-7 - Mapping the progression of subjective cognitive decline to mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer´s disease dementia with multimodal biomarkers, AP.JP2

Abstract

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative condition of relevant social and economicimpacts and its early diagnosis is essential to improve the prognosis of patients. Thus, theseeking for promising new techniques in the investigation of early markers of the disease is ofparamount importance. In this paper, a relatively new technique will be applied in the study ofAD alterations, an analysis of the connectivity properties of networks extracted from structuralcovariance maps. These maps will be constructed from diffusion tensor imaging, so the studywill be made from the brain white matter. This is a new approach because structural covariancemaps are typically constructed from the study of the cerebral cortex. Then, the objective is toanalyze the variations in the main connectivity properties (global efficiency, clusteringcoefficient, transitivity and modularity) between the different subgroups evaluated. The studywill be cross-sectional; Subjects will be divided according to NIA/AA 2018 criteria into: MildAlzheimer's disease, mild cognitive impairment (AD continuum - with altered amyloidsuspectednon-AD pathophysiology - SNAP - and normal biomarkers) and controls. Imageprocessing and analyses will be done through the ExplorerDTI graphical toolbox.