Probing the Role of a Regional Quantitative Assessment of Amyloid PET

BACKGROUND: In clinical practice, the amy-PET is globally inspected to provide a binary outcome, but the role of a regional assessment has not been fully investigated yet.OBJECTIVE: To deepen the role of regional amyloid burden and its implication on clinical-neuropsychological features.MATERIALS: Amy-PET and a complete neuropsychological assessment (Trail Making Test, Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test, semantic verbal fluency, Symbol Digit, Stroop, visuoconstruction) were available in 109 patients with clinical suspicion of Alzheimer's disease. By averaging the standardized uptake value ratio and ELBA, a regional quantification was calculated for each scan. Patients were grouped according to their overall amyloid load: correlation maps, based on regional quantification, were calculated and compared. A regression analysis between neuropsychological assessment and the regional amyloid-beta (Abeta) load was carried out.RESULTS: Significant differences were observed between the correlation maps of patients at increasing levels of Abeta and the overall dataset. The Abeta uptake of the subcortical gray matter resulted not related to other brain regions independently of the global Abeta level. A significant association of semantic verbal fluency was observed with ratios of cortical and subcortical distribution of Abeta which represent a coarse measure of differences in regional distribution of Abeta.CONCLUSION: Our observations confirmed the different susceptibility to Abeta accumulation among brain regions. The association between cognition and Abeta distribution deserves further investigations: it is possibly due to a direct local effect or it represents a proxy marker of a more aggressive disease subtype. Regional Abeta assessment represents an available resource on amy-PET scan with possibly clinical and prognostic implications.