Connectomic Analysis in Dementia With Lewy Bodies: A Potential Diagnostic Imaging Biomarker

Detailed Summary

Dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) is the second most common cause of dementia and is associated with parkinsonism, hallucinations, and cognitive fluctuations. Diagnosis is often either missed or delayed due to physician lack of familiarity with characteristic features, the inability of structural MRI to detect a pathological signature for this condition, and the lack of healthcare provider access to "indicative biomarkers" that are either unavailable at community clinics or costly due to lack of insurance coverage. The role of resting state function MRI (rs-fMRI) as a diagnostic biomarker has been underexplored in this disease. We propose using a novel cloud-based automated imaging software processing program that identifies abnormal brain networks or connectomes using resting state functional MRI (rs-fMRI) and data from the Human Connectome Project (HCP). Furthermore, the imaging protocol to capture this data is relatively short (15 minutes) and can be performed at most imaging centers, lending potential clinical applicability to this study. We intend to study dysfunctional large scale brain networks (LSBNs) in DLB by comparing rs-fMRI imaging data in this population with cognitively normal (CN) and mild Alzheimer's disease (AD) subjects from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI)-2/3 database.

Study Details

Timeline

Interventions