Alzheimer's Disease Resting State Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study

Objective:Make use of the Blood Oxygen Level Dependent and Resting-state Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (rfMRI) technology to study the changes of aging people without cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in spontaneous brain activity. Investigate the value of BOLD-rfMRI in AD patients by combining Mini-Mental State Examination combined (MMSE) in order to provide new imaging support standard for the diagnosis of AD.Methods:The AD group (n=6) and aging people group (n=6) without cognitive disorders (sex, and age are matched by AD groups) were screened out via the screening, neuropsychological evaluation and clinical examination of Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, Dongzhimen Hospital three subjects. Siemens1.5T magnetic resonance imaging machine was used for the above12cases to take the head rfMRI scanning.Collected and pre-processed the data, then the data was statistically analysed using the algorithm with low-frequency amplitude (ALFF). Observed the significant changes of the AD group brain areas compared with the control group ALFF to indirectly reflect the changes in the whole brain spontaneous activity of the AD patients.Results:The results showed that the cognitive function of the AD patients were significantly damaged compared with normal control group and the difference was statistically significant (P<0.05); The resting state fMRI results showed that the ALFF value on the right hippocampus of AD patients and parahippocampal gyrus, inferior frontal gyrus was higher than the normal group, and the difference was statistically significant (P<0.05); The ALFF value of the posterior cingulate, the medial prefrontal and the precuneus was lower than the control group, and this difference was also statistically significant (P<0.05).Conclusion:Compared with aging people, Part of the brain areas associated with memory spontaneous activity had occurred the significant changes. It had indicated that the diminished or enhanced spontaneous brain activity may play an important role in the pathogenesis of AD, and the application of BOLD-rfMRI would be helpful for the early prediction of AD patients.