Hippocampo-Horn Percentage and Parietal Atrophy Score for Easy Visual Assessment of Brain Atrophy on Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Early- and Late-Onset Alzheimer's Disease
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) visual scales of brain atrophy are important for differential diagnosis of dementias in routine clinical practice. Atrophy patterns in early- and late-onset Alzheimer's disease (AD) can be different according to some studies.
OBJECTIVE: Our goal was to assess brain atrophy patterns in early- and late-onset AD using our recently developed simple MRI visual scales and evaluate their reliability. METHODS: We used Hippocampo-horn percentage (Hip-hop) and Parietal Atrophy Score (PAS) to compare mediotemporal and parietal atrophy on brain MRI among 4 groups: 26 patients with early-onset AD, 21 younger cognitively normal persons, 32 patients with late-onset AD, 36 older cognitively normal persons.
Two raters scored all brain MRI to assess reliability of the Hip-hop and PAS. Brain MRI were obtained from Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) database.
RESULTS: The patients with early-onset AD had significantly more pronounced mediotemporal and also parietal atrophy bilaterally compared to the controls (both p < 0.01). The patients with late-onset AD had significantly more pronounced only mediotemporal atrophy bilaterally compared to the controls (p < 0.000001), but parietal lobes were the same.Intra-rater and inter-rater reliability of both visual scales Hip-hop and PAS were almost perfect in all cases (weighted-kappa value ranged from 0.90 to 0.99).
CONCLUSION: While mediotemporal atrophy detected using Hip-hop is universal across whole AD age spectrum, parietal atrophy detected using PAS is worth rating only in early-onset AD. Hip-hop and PAS are very reliable MRI visual scales.