Dementia MRI-PET Imaging Platform (DeMPI)

DeMPI is a newly established multimodal imaging platform in Germany. Its main focus is an early detection of healthy elderly or patients of MCI, who are at an increased risk to develop clinically relevant Alzheimer's Disease within a personally relevant time frame (i.e. within a few years). DeMPI aims to stratify preclinical Alzheimer's Disease by risk and improve the early diagnostics of Alzheimer's Disease. Another aim of the platform is to investigate factors of resilience. The participating centers are the clinic of psychiatry and psychotherapy of the University Medical Center Mainz (Prof. A. Fellgiebel), the clinicl of psychosomatics of the University Medical Center Rostock (Prof. Dr. S. Teipel), the clinic and polyclinic of nuclear medicine of the University Medical Center Leipzig (Prof. Dr. O. Sabri) as well as the clinic of nuclear medicine of the University Medical Center Cologne (Prof. Dr. A. Drzezga).

Within the scope of the first study, which is funded by GE-Healthcare, we aim to investigate the predictive utility of functional connectivity (measured using functional MRI) with respect to imminent development of clinically relevant symptoms of Alzheimer's Disease in MCI patients with cerebral amyloidosis (measured using 18F-based amyloid-PET (Flutemetamol)).We will also investigate the predictive value of structural connectivity using DWI. Finally, the multimodal data will be used to develop an automated MRI-based tool for the optimized prediction of short-term cognitive decline and the development of dementia in MCI-patients with amyloidosis. The start of data acquisition is scheduled for the beginning of 2018.