Amyloid Analyzer - A software assistant for qualitative and quantitative analysis of Florbetaben PET scans

Abstract

Amyloid imaging is currently on the verge of becoming a vital imaging biomarker for the diagnosis and progressmonitoring of Alzheimer's disease. It is a positron emission tomography (PET) imaging technique based on tracers binding to b-amyloid plaques in the brain. These plaques are known to accumulate over time in the gray matter of the brains of AD patients. Images acquired with an amyloid binding tracer can be difficult to interpret, especially for cases showing an early stage of the disease. Also, precise quantification is challenging, because the cortical gray matter can not be well delineated from the images. In this work, we present a software assistant targeted at both qualitative and quantitative analysis of amyloid PET scans. It has been designed with the aim to be easy to use and integrate well into clinical workflows, while at the same time providing solid quantitative results for use e.g. in pharmaceutical trials.