Brain Scanning in Dementia

The disease processes associated with dementia damage brain tissue and cause the brain to shrink. Some disease processes are more likely to affect particular regions of the brain than others. Using brain scans to identify the regions worst affected can help to differentiate between the different disease processes and allow doctors to make a more accurate diagnosis. The black areas in the images below represent regions without brain tissue.

Clinical guidelines recommend that people suspected of having dementia should have a brain scan. MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) scans allow us to see the brain in amazing detail and it is one of the most common types of imaging techniques used for this purpose. MRI produces image slices through the brain from several different angles, which we refer to as coronal, axial, or sagittal (see examples in the images below). This project focuses on coronal image slices, which are the most common slices used to assess the hippocampus.