Longitudinal Morphometric MRI Study of Alzheimer's Disease

A longitudinal morphometric MRI study of Alzheimer's disease(AD)was conducted to determine the relationship between the progression of the symptoms and the progression of the brain atrophy.　The Voxelbased Specific Regional Analysis System for Alzheimer's Disease (VSRAD) developed by Matsuda et al. was used as a method of morphometry to perform the sta‑ tistical MR image analysis.　Thirtyeight patients of AD patients were investigated with VSRAD.　These patients were divided into two groups according to t he progression of symp‑ toms based on a clinical evaluation.　One group was the progress group(20 patients) while the other group was the stable group(18 patients)for comparison.　The relationship was investi‑ gated between the speed of the symptomatic progression and the change in each VSRAD indicator.　Consequently the entorhinal Zscore and the entorhinal atrophy rate showed a cor‑ relation with the speed of the symptomatic progression.　The increase of the entorhinal Zscore in the followup was larger in the progress group than that in the stable group(0.65/1.28 years in the progress group and 0.05/1.26 years in the stable group.) .　These results suggest that a rapid symptomatic progression in an AD patient accompanies the rapid progression of atrophy in the entorhinal cortex.