Alzheimer's disease is the main cause of dementia worldwide. Although there is no cure, early detection is considered crucial for being able to develop effective treatments that act before its progress is irreversible.
Mild cognitive impairment is a phase that precedes the disease, but not everyone who suffers from it ends up developing Alzheimer's. A study led by scientists at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), published in the IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics, has succeeded in precisely distinguishing between people whose deterioration is stable and those who will progress to having the disease. The new technique, which uses specific artificial intelligence methods to compare magnetic resonance images, is more effective than other methods currently in use.
Alzheimer's disease affects more than 50 million people worldwide and the ageing of the population means that there may be many more sufferers in the coming decades...