Combination of Structural MRI and FDG-PET of the Brain Improves Diagnostic Accuracy in Newly Manifested Cognitive Impairment in Geriatric Inpatients

Kerstin Ritter, Catharina Lange, Martin Weygandt, Anja Mäurer, Anna Roberts, Melanie Estrella, Per Suppa, Lothar Spies, Vikas Prasad, Ingo Steffen, Ivayla Apostolova, Daniel Bittner, Mehmet Gövercin, Winfried Brenner, Christine Mende, Oliver Peters, Joachim Seybold, Jochen B. Fiebach, Elisabeth Steinhagen-Thiessen, Harald HampelJohn Dylan Haynes, Ralph Buchert

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

9 Scopus citations

Abstract

Background: The cause of cognitive impairment in acutely hospitalized geriatric patients is often unclear. The diagnostic process is challenging but important in order to treat potentially life-threatening etiologies or identify underlying neurodegenerative disease. Objective: To evaluate the add-on diagnostic value of structural and metabolic neuroimaging in newly manifested cognitive impairment in elderly geriatric inpatients. Methods: Eighty-one inpatients (55 females, 81.6±5.5 y) without history of cognitive complaints prior to hospitalization were recruited in 10 acute geriatrics clinics. Primary inclusion criterion was a clinical hypothesis of Alzheimer's disease (AD), cerebrovascular disease (CVD), or mixed ADCVD etiology (MD), which remained uncertain after standard diagnostic workup. Additional procedures performed after enrollment included detailed neuropsychological testing and structural MRI and FDG-PET of the brain. An interdisciplinary expert team established the most probable etiologic diagnosis (non-neurodegenerative, AD, CVD, or MD) integrating all available data. Automatic multimodal classification based on Random Undersampling Boosting was used for rater-independent assessment of the complementary contribution of the additional diagnostic procedures to the etiologic diagnosis. Results: Automatic 4-class classification based on all diagnostic routine standard procedures combined reproduced the etiologic expert diagnosis in 31 of the patients (p=0.100, chance level 25). Highest accuracy by a single modality was achieved by MRI or FDG-PET (both 45, p≤0.001). Integration of all modalities resulted in 76 accuracy (p≤0.001). Conclusion: These results indicate substantial improvement of diagnostic accuracy in uncertain de novo cognitive impairment in acutely hospitalized geriatric patients with the integration of structural MRI and brain FDG-PET into the diagnostic process.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1319-1331
Number of pages13
JournalJournal of Alzheimer's Disease
Volume54
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - Oct 18 2016

Keywords

  • Cognitive impairment
  • geriatric inpatients
  • magnetic resonance imaging
  • multimodal classification
  • positron emission tomography

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