Matthew C. Murphy1,
John Huston1, Clifford R. Jack1, Kevin J. Glaser1,
David T. Jones2, Matthew L. Senjem1, Armando Manduca3,
Joel P. Felmlee1, Richard L. Ehman1
1Department
of Radiology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, United States; 2Department
of Neurology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, United States; 3Department
of Physiology and Biomedical Engineering, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, United
States
Building on a previous finding that global brain stiffness is a novel biomarker of Alzheimers disease (AD), the purpose of this work was to measure regional brain stiffness across the full AD spectrum (i.e. cognitively normal → mild cognitive impairment → AD dementia). Using a novel MR elastography pipeline, this work demonstrates that changes in brain stiffness follow the known topography of AD (frontal, parietal and temporal lobes significantly affected). Furthermore, brain stiffness may provide unique insights into the temporal dynamics of AD progression as it was shown to change non-monotonically with respect to disease severity.