New drugs improve imaging of Alzheimer’s Disease

In 2021, Alzheimer’s disease (AD) treatments advanced with one new drug approval and another drug breakthrough designation by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Clinical use of these drug therapies requires PET and MR imaging to aid in patient selection, detect signs of adverse reactions and ultimately monitor the drug’s effectiveness and disease progression.

Users of GE Healthcare’s industry-leading SIGNA™ PET/MR, that simultaneously scans with PET and MR, know the value of co-registered PET and MR images for AD. PET can measure the accumulation of beta-amyloid plaque, which can’t be detected with MR or CT. Beta-amyloid plaque deposition may begin as early as 10 to 15 years before cognitive impairment symptoms.

GE’s MR and PET/MR imaging systems offer robust solutions for AD patient management, including solutions for faster scans (AIR™ Recon DL, AIR x™, HyperSense), motion correction (PROMO), reducing distortion artifacts (PROGRES), and fully automated post-processing (CortexID Suite) for quantifying PET beta amyloid and FDG scans acquired on PET or PET/MR systems, as well as quantitative reporting applications such as Quantib® Brain, NeuroQuant and Icometrix.