St. Louis describes database of 6,217 scans for Alzheimer’s research — News-Medical
Washington University in St. Louis has described the Knight Alzheimer Research Imaging (KARI) database, which contains 6,217 neuroimaging studies of 1,645 people aged 42 to 97. The resource covers healthy aging, preclinical and symptomatic Alzheimer’s disease. As News-Medical reports, the database description was published in the journal Nature Communications.
Long-term observation
More than 800 participants underwent examinations repeatedly, and some of them were observed for more than 15 years. KARI includes structural, functional and diffusion MRI, as well as positron emission tomography to assess amyloid and tau protein accumulation.
The data are supplemented by clinical and cognitive assessments, genetic information, fluid biomarkers and demographic information. Qualified researchers can access both raw images and processed measures, including anatomical segmentations and quantitative biomarkers.
Imaging datasets
MRI examinations were conducted during 3,385 sessions involving 1,571 people. Amyloid PET includes 2,684 scans from 1,370 participants, while tau PET includes 1,113 scans from 826 participants. A total of 792 people underwent all three types of imaging: MRI, amyloid PET and tau PET.
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Most participants had no clinically defined cognitive impairment. Clinical Dementia Rating assessments were available for 1,643 people within two years of the scan date: 1,120 had a maximum score of 0, indicating no impairment; 362 had a score of 0.5; 150 had a score of 1; and 11 had a score of 2.
Link to cognitive status
The authors found that greater cortical thickness in brain regions sensitive to Alzheimer’s disease was associated with better cognitive test results. At the same time, higher amyloid and tau protein levels on PET were associated with poorer cognitive performance. These associations remained after accounting for age, education, sex and carriage of the APOE ε4 variant.
The researchers noted that the data were collected over many years using different scanners, different magnetic field strengths and different PET tracers. In addition, participants are predominantly highly educated and mostly white, which limits the ability to generalize the results to broader population groups.
