Speed to treatment: How PET scans can aid dementia diagnosis

Dementia can be debilitating for patients and families – especially since many kinds of this neurodegenerative disease, including Alzheimer’s disease, often can’t be easily diagnosed. Now, with new therapies available to treat some Alzheimer’s patients, diagnostic tools like PET scans are offering a path to treatment that can slow the onset of dementia.

Neil Horner, MD, a nuclear medicine radiologist and neuroradiologist with Atlantic Health, shares more about how PET scans, an extremely safe diagnostic tool, can be used to diagnose and guide treatment options for different types of dementia.

Statistical approach to dementia diagnosis

Alzheimer’s is a neurodegenerative disease that, according to the Alzheimer’s association, affects roughly 6.7 million Americans. During Alzheimer’s, amyloid (a kind of protein) plaques form in the brain and destroy healthy brain tissue. New types of therapies target these plaques, dissolving them and ferrying them out of the brain. These treatments are promising, but they can only be used for patients with mild plaque. That means an accurate diagnosis is crucial to determine the right treatment for patients.

Doctors at Atlantic Health have been leaders in using both fludeoxyglucose (FDG) and amyloid PET/CT scans to diagnose dementias including Alzheimer’s. While FDG scans use glucose to evaluate which parts of the brain’s metabolism are affected, amyloid PET/CT scans, available at Morristown Medical Center, Overlook Medical Center and Chilton Medical Center, can detect the actual amyloid plaques.

“These scans allow us to determine severity of disease,” says Dr. Horner. “That means we gain increased specificity and sensitivity between types of neurological disease as well as a pathway to treatment for some patients with certain types of dementia.”

As one of the few health systems to use quantitative analysis combined with a robust data set and statistical analysis to read these scans, doctors at Atlantic Health can see what areas of the brain dementia is impacting and gain subtle insights. These findings are critical to identifying patients who are candidates for treatment as well as seeing how therapies are helping manage disease.

Improving care for dementia patients

In addition to these advanced PET scans, Atlantic Health is expanding its diagnostic suite with new, state-of-the-art StarGuide SPECT-CT scanners at Overlook Medical Center and Morristown Medical Center.

James Cassuto, MD, PhD, system associate medical director for nuclear medicine with Atlantic Health, is helping lead the charge to bring this advanced imaging system to deliver faster scan times and sharper image resolution for patients with neurodegenerative disease. This new equipment will help doctors more accurately diagnose conditions including different forms of dementia.

In addition to the new scanners, Atlantic Health is also implementing leading-edge software across the system to support quantitative brain imaging. This software will allow doctors to analyze brain scans, from CT to PET scans, with greater precision.

“This improved diagnostic accuracy is especially important for patients living with dementia, as shorter and more comfortable scan experiences significantly improve overall care,” says Dr. Cassuto. “Together, the new scanner and software upgrades position us to provide some of the most advanced dementia imaging available today, offering patients and their families the clarity they deserve.”