Defining Imaging Biomarker Cut Points for Brain Aging and Alzheimer's Disease

Overview

Journal Alzheimers Dement

Specialties Neurology
Psychiatry

Date 2016 Oct 5

PMID 27697430

Citations 500

Authors

Clifford R Jack Jr

Heather J Wiste

Stephen D Weigand

Terry M Therneau

Val J Lowe

David S Knopman

Jeffrey L Gunter

Matthew L Senjem

David T Jones

Kejal Kantarci

Mary M Machulda

Michelle M Mielke

Rosebud O Roberts

Prashanthi Vemuri

Denise A Reyes

Ronald C Petersen

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Introduction: Our goal was to develop cut points for amyloid positron emission tomography (PET), tau PET, flouro-deoxyglucose (FDG) PET, and MRI cortical thickness.

Methods: We examined five methods for determining cut points.

Results: The reliable worsening method produced a cut point only for amyloid PET. The specificity, sensitivity, and accuracy of cognitively impaired versus young clinically normal (CN) methods labeled the most people abnormal and all gave similar cut points for tau PET, FDG PET, and cortical thickness. Cut points defined using the accuracy of cognitively impaired versus age-matched CN method labeled fewer people abnormal.

Discussion: In the future, we will use a single cut point for amyloid PET (standardized uptake value ratio, 1.42; centiloid, 19) based on the reliable worsening cut point method. We will base lenient cut points for tau PET, FDG PET, and cortical thickness on the accuracy of cognitively impaired versus young CN method and base conservative cut points on the accuracy of cognitively impaired versus age-matched CN method.

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