Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging - Synthetic Aperture Magnetometry (fMRI-SAM) and Alzheimer's Disease

Evaluation of fMRI-SAM in the Early Detection of Alzheimer's Disease.

The aim of the protocol is to study the resting brain activation profile of 3 groups of people, using a new fMRI procedure, called fMRI-SAM. fMRI-SAM will be applied to 25 Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients, 25 patients suffering from amnestic - mild cognitive impairment (MCI) - a clinical picture which may be a prodromal form of AD - and 60 healthy controls. The first analysis of the data will search differences of brain activation profiles between the 3 groups. In the second step, the investigators will study the predictive value of fMRI-SAM to detect MCI patients who will later convert to AD.

Inclusion criteria:

• Alzheimer's disease of mild to moderate severity (25 patients)
• Amnestic MCI patients (25 patients)
• 55-75 year-old patients

Exclusion criteria:

• Any other cause of dementia for AD patients
• Any stroke
• Any disease with a negative vital prognosis