Amyloid PET

Duygu Tosun-Turgut, PhD, associate professor and co-director of the Center for Imaging of Neurodegenerative Diseases (CIND) talks about the FDA's recent accelerated approval of Aduhelm, the role of amyloid PET imaging and more.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is defined as amyloid plaques, tau tangles and degeneration of nerve cells in the brain leading to memory problems, cognitive decline and dementia. Currently, there are no treatments which slow the progression of AD, but a number of treatments are in late-stage clinical trials and some appear promising.

Radiology plays a key role in large, national, multicenter research studies such as the IDEAS study.

Amyloid PET imaging to predict Alzheimer's disease dramatically alters physicians' care decisions for patients with mild cognitive impairment/dementia, according to the nationwide IDEAS study.

A recent dinner and symposium hosted by the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging featured presentations by a multidisciplinary UCSF team on the topic of amyloid PET imaging, a diagnostic technique to diagnose Alzheimer's disease.

Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia, accounting for approximately 50 to 70 percent of all cases, yet there are still many complexities involved in diagnosing the disease. Amyloid PET imaging represents a potentially revolutionary advancement in the assessment of those with cognitive impairment.

The UCSF Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging is proud to be a site for the Imaging Dementia - Evidence for Amyloid Scanning (IDEAS) Study.

UCSF’s Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative, the world’s largest observational study on Alzheimer’s disease, is pioneering the use of amyloid PET imaging as a diagnostic biomarker for a disease that afflicts over 5 million Americans.