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Table 1 MRI biomarkers for neurodegenerative diseases

From: Relevance of biomarkers across different neurodegenerative diseases

Biomarker

Target

Advantages

Disadvantages

Volumetry (vMRI)

Whole brain/medial temporal lobe, hippocampus

Highly reproducible and sensitive to disease-related changes

Late-stage biomarker; cannot provide information on the cause of atrophy

Cortical thickness

Cerebral cortex

May improve classification between dementia subtypes

Limited to neocortex; cannot be used to determine the cause of atrophy

Functional MRI (fMRI)

Regional/network functional activity

Can evaluate robusticity of networks at resting state and during tasks

Reproducibility and influence of vasculature unclear

FLAIR/T2 imaging

White matter lesions

Highly sensitive

Cannot determine the cause of the lesion

T2*/susceptibility-weighted imaging

Microbleeds/myelin/iron

Microbleed location can aid diagnosis

Undesirable artifacts at air/tissue interfaces; few longitudinal studies to date

Diffusion tensor imaging

White matter

Highly sensitive to white matter damage

Fairly low resolution and sensitive to artifacts from water diffusion; particularly sensitive to movements

Neuromelanin-sensitive

Locus coeruleus, substantia nigra

Sensitive to noradrenergic and dopaminergic subcortical nuclei

Semi-quantitative assessment/not disease specific

  1. Abbreviations: MRI magnetic resonance imaging, FLAIR fluid-attenuated inversion recovery