DTI analyses and clinical applications in Alzheimer's disease

DTI is one of the most effective MR tools for the investigation of the brain anatomy. In addition to the gray matter, histopathological studies indicate that white matter is also a good target for both the early diagnosis of AD and for monitoring disease progression, which motivates us to use DTI to study AD patients in vivo. There are already a large amount of studies reporting significant differences between AD patients and controls, as well as to predict progression of disease in symptomatic non-demented individuals. Application of these findings in clinical practice remains to be demonstrated.