Correlation of [18F]florbetaben textural features and age of onset of Alzheimer’s disease: a principal components analysis approach

Abstract

Background

When Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is occurring at an early onset before 65 years old, its clinical course is generally more aggressive than in the case of a late onset. We aim at identifying [${}^{18}$F]florbetaben PET biomarkers sensitive to differences between early-onset Alzheimer’s disease (EOAD) and late-onset Alzheimer’s disease (LOAD). We conducted [${}^{18}$F]florbetaben PET/CT scans of 43 newly diagnosed AD subjects. We calculated 93 textural parameters for each of the 83 Hammers areas. We identified 41 independent principal components for each brain region, and we studied their Spearman correlation with the age of AD onset, by taking into account multiple comparison corrections. Finally, we calculated the probability that EOAD and LOAD patients have different amyloid-$\beta$ ($A\beta$) deposition by comparing the mean and the variance of the significant principal components obtained in the two groups with a 2-tailed Student’s t-test.

Results

We found that four principal components exhibit a significant correlation at a 95% confidence level with the age of onset in the left lateral part of the anterior temporal lobe, the right anterior orbital gyrus of the frontal lobe, the right lateral orbital gyrus of the frontal lobe and the left anterior part of the superior temporal gyrus. The data are consistent with the hypothesis that EOAD patients have a significantly different [${}^{18}$F]florbetaben uptake than LOAD patients in those four brain regions.

Conclusions

Early-onset AD implies a very irregular pattern of $A\beta$ deposition. The authors suggest that the identified textural features can be used as quantitative biomarkers for the diagnosis and characterization of EOAD patients.