Abstract

A growing body of evidence suggests that a preclinical phase of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) exists several years or more prior to the overt manifestation of clinical symptoms and is characterized by subtle neuropsychological and brain changes. Identification of individuals prior to the development of significant clinical symptoms is imperative in order to have the greatest treatment impact by maintaining cognitive abilities and preserving quality of life. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) offers considerable promise as a non-invasive tool for detecting morphological brain changes in Alzheimer disease affected patients. In fact, evidence to date indicates that functional brain decline precedes structural decline in preclinical samples. Therefore, fMRI may offer the unique ability to capture the dynamic state of change in the degenerating brain. This analysis examines morphological change in brain structure in those at risk for AD as well as in early AD. fMRI data analysis and findings is done on at-risk groups by collecting data from fMRI data centre which is gathered according to the virtue of genetic susceptibility or mild cognitive decline followed by an appraisal of the methodological issues concerning the diagnostic usefulness of fMRI in early AD. A total number of 28 subjects data, including 16 young Subjects data (18 and 30 year’s of age) and 12 Alzheimer disease affected subjects data (65 and 92 year’s of age) from fMRI data centre were analyzed in this paper. The analysis result shows that the cortex, hippocampus, and ventricle area of the Alzheimer diseased patients have shrunk dramatically than the normal subjects and other changes of brain are distinguishable. A discussion of data analyzing procedure has been given that will improve the ability to reliably detect early brain changes and will help for early identification of Alzheimer (AD) disease and to cure the disease.

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