A knowledge-based system for the diagnosis of alzheimer's disease

Abstract

Therapies to slow down the progression of Alzheimer's disease are most effective when applied in its initial stages. Therefore it is important to develop methods to diagnose the disease as early as possible. It is also desirable to establish standards which can be used generally by physicians who may not be experts in diagnosis of the disease. One possible method to obtain an early diagnosis is the evaluation of the glucose metabolism of the brain. In this paper we present a prototype of an expert system that automatically diagnoses Alzheimer's disease on the basis of positron emission tomography images displaying the metabolic activity in the brain. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2003.