Regionally-specific diffusion tensor imaging in mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease.
Open accessAbstract
Background Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) studies have shown significant cross-sectional differences among normal controls (NC) mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients in several fiber tracts in the brain, but longitudinal assessment is needed.Methods We studied 75 participants (25 NC, 25 amnestic MCI, and 25 mild AD) at baseline and 3 months later, with both imaging and clinical evaluations. Fractional anisotropy (FA) was analyzed in regions of interest (ROIs) in: (1) fornix, (2) cingulum bundle, (3) splenium, and (4) cerebral peduncles. Clinical data included assessments of clinical severity and cognitive function. Cross-sectional and longitudinal differences in FA, within each ROI, were analyzed with generalized estimating equations (GEE).Results Cross-sectionally, AD patients had lower FA than NC (p<0.05) at baseline and 3 months in the fornix and anterior portion of the cingulum bundle. Compared to MCI, AD cases had lower FA (p<0.05) in these regions and the splenium at 0 and 3 months. Both the fornix and anterior cingulum correlated across all clinical cognitive scores; lower FA in these ROIs corresponded to worse performance. Over the course of 3 months, when the subjects were clinically stable, the ROIs were also largely stable.Conclusions Using DTI, findings indicate FA is decreased in specific fiber tracts among groups of subjects that vary along the spectrum from normal to AD, and that this measure is stable over short periods of time. The fornix is a predominant outflow tract of the hippocampus and may be an important indicator of AD progression.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Diffusion MRI is more sensitive to brain microstructural changes than conventional volumetric MRI and has been widely used for evaluation of white matter integrity.
“Compared to the conventional volumetric MRI methods, diffusion MRI (dMRI) is more sensitive to the brain microstructural changes and has been widely used for the evaluation of white matter integrity (Bozzali et al., 2002; Mielke et al., 2009; Stebbins and Murphy, 2009; Wang et al., 2019b; Harrison et al., 2020; Veale et al., 2021).”
From Age-dependent microstructure alterations in 5xFAD mice by high-resolution diffusion tensor imaging (2022) · cites this paper as Mielke et al., 2009
The Introduction describes DTI as a method for examining white matter integrity and cites numerous studies using it, supporting the claim about its use. The Discussion says the study did not analyze other white- or gray-matter measures alongside DTI; our copy does not establish that diffusion MRI is more sensitive to microstructural changes than conventional volumetric MRI. Page numbers were not provided. (LLM, conf=0.87)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredThese regions show early degenerative changes in MCI and AD.
“These are all regions that show early degenerative changes in MCI and AD (Mielke et al., 2009; Nir et al., 2013; Maggipinto et al., 2017; Powell et al., 2018).”
From Diffusion MRI Indices and Their Relation to Cognitive Impairment in Brain Aging: The Updated Multi-protocol Approach in ADNI3 (2019) · cites this paper as Mielke et al., 2009
The Discussion reports reduced fiber-tract integrity in the fornix and anterior cingulum in AD, and describes the fornix and anterior cingulum as potential early markers. The MCI findings are narrower: a cross-sectional fornix difference appeared only in the most impaired subgroup, while anterior-cingulum FA declined relative to controls over three months. The paper therefore supports early changes in some studied regions, but not a blanket claim that all the unspecified regions show early degenerative changes in both MCI and AD. (LLM, conf=0.82)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
The citation lists haven’t been fetched yet
References 49 · Cited by 225
- Authors
- Mielke, M. M., Kozauer, N. A., Chan, K. C. G., George, M., Toroney, J., Zerrate, M., Bandeen-Roche, K., Wang, M.-C., vanZijl, P., & Pekar, J. J.
- Affiliations
- Johns Hopkins University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Mielke, M.M.
- Venue
- NeuroImage
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2009-05-15
- Volume
- 46
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 47-55
- ISSN
- 1053-8119 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC2688089
- OpenAlex
- W2060295418
- Cited by
- 225
- References
- 49
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 9 · 2020: 8 · 2019: 7 · 2018: 8 · 2017: 9 · 2016: 14 · 2015: 20 · 2014: 23 · 2013: 24 · 2012: 35
- FWCI
- 15.21
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- NeuroImage (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- Johns Hopkins University
- National Institutes of Health
- National Institute on Aging (P50‐AG021334, P50AG005146, P30AG021334)
- National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (R21NS060271)
- National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (P41EB015909)
- National Center for Research Resources (P41RR15241, P41RR015241)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Psychiatry and Mental health › Dementia and Cognitive Impairment Research
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Imaging › Advanced Neuroimaging Techniques and Applications
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Physiology › Alzheimer's disease research and treatments
- Keywords
- diffusion tensor imaging, mild cognitive impairment, Alzheimer's disease, fractional anisotropy, fornix, cingulum, splenium, cerebral peduncle, white matter tracts, longitudinal stability, cognitive decline
- MeSH terms
- Aged, Alzheimer Disease, Brain, Cognition Disorders, Female, Humans, Image Processing, Computer-Assisted, Male, Middle Aged, Anisotropy, Disease Progression, Diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
