Imaging brain pathology in dementia using PET and MRI Version 2.0
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Quantification of vascular and neuronal pathology in dementia using PET and MRI
IRAS ID
233456
Contact name
Laura M Parkes
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Manchester
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
researchregistry3569, http://www.researchregistry.com/
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 0 months, 0 days
Research summary
There are more and more older people living with dementia in our society and we need to deal with the challenges this brings urgently. There are different types of dementia, caused by different changes in the brain, and affect the person with the condition in different ways. Medical imaging methods such as MRI and PET are already used to help diagnose dementia but the MRI techniques commonly used in hospitals only show changes at a late stage in the disease.
This study will test the sensitivity, specificity and repeatability of new Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) acquired simultaneously with Positron Emission Tomography (PET) techniques to detect subtle features of the brain. We are interested in detecting early changes in the brain due to vascular disease and dementia.
Our aim in this project is to test new imaging techniques that could tell doctors early on that someone will go on to develop dementia and what type of dementia they will have. This would help with deciding what the best treatment will be. We will also test whether, by using information from the MRI images, we can reduce the dose of the radioactive tracer used for PET imaging while maintaining the same diagnostic information.
We will collect simultaneous MRI and PET images on 20 patients with mild cognitive impairment and 20 age-matched controls. Participants are expected to have a range of vascular risk factors from which vascular risk will be calculated. The sensitivity of the imaging measurements to cognitive impairment and vascular risk will be determined. Repeat scanning of the MCI patients will determine the repeatability of the imaging measurements. The PET imaging data will be sub-sampled to mimic reduced dose and the accuracy of the diagnostic information regarding amyloid deposition will be compared to that when using the full dataset.REC name
North West - Greater Manchester East Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
18/NW/0097
Date of REC Opinion
12 Apr 2018
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion