Combining neuropsychological assessment and structural neuroimaging to identify early Alzheimer's disease in a memory clinic cohort

Abstract

Introduction: The current study examined the contributions of comprehensive neuropsychological assessment and volumetric assessment of selected mesial temporal subregions on structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to identify patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) and mild probable Alzheimer's disease (AD) dementia in a memory clinic cohort.

Methods: Comprehensive neuropsychological assessment and automated entorhinal, transentorhinal, and hippocampal volume measurements were conducted in 40 healthy controls, 38 patients with subjective memory symptoms, 16 patients with aMCI, 16 patients with mild probable AD dementia. Multinomial logistic regression was used to compare the neuropsychological and MRI measures.

Results: Combining the neuropsychological and MRI measures improved group membership prediction over the MRI measures alone but did not improve group membership prediction over the neuropsychological measures alone.

Conclusion: Comprehensive neuropsychological assessment was an important tool to evaluate cognitive impairment. The mesial temporal volumetric MRI measures contributed no diagnostic value over and above the determinations made through neuropsychological assessment.

Keywords: Alzheimer's disease; magnetic resonance imaging; memory clinic; neuropsychology.