Decreased Brain Stiffness in Alzheimer's Disease Determined by Magnetic Resonance Elastography

Matthew C. Murphy¹, John Huston, III¹, Clifford R. Jack, Jr. ¹, Kevin J. Glaser¹, Armando Manduca¹, Joel P. Felmlee¹, Richard L. Ehman¹

MRE is a technique for noninvasively measuring tissue stiffness. The purpose of this work was to assess reproducibility of a 3D MRE exam of the brain in 10 healthy volunteers, and to use the 3D brain MRE exam to study the effects of Alzheimers disease (AD) in 7 subjects with probable AD, 14 age- and gender-matched PIB- controls and 7 age- and gender-matched PIB+ controls. MRE detected a significant decrease in brain stiffness in subjects with AD compared to both control groups. This decrease in stiffness likely reflects a loss of normal cytoarchitecture of the brain parenchyma due to AD.