Amyloid deposition in cerebrovascular angiopathy

Recent evidence suggests that AD is associated with the development of cerebral amyloid angiopathy and with significant changes in the blood-brain barrier glucose transporter and basement membrane protein alterations. It is likely that these changes significantly contribute to chronic cerebral hypoperfusion, possibly resulting in progressive neural death in AD. To investigate the etiology of these changes, we have analyzed postmortem tissue sections of frontal cortex of moderately demented AD cases, stained using both single-label and double-label immunocytochemistry to detect vessels and beta-amyloid. The resultant color images are analyzed using HSV (hue-saturation-value) color image analysis, shape analysis, and histogram analysis techniques. These analyses let us segment the tissue images for further statistical analyses.