Automated Brain Morphometry for Dementia Diagnosis

Early dementia diagnosis improves patient and carer experience, links them to appropriate care and support and enables timely symptomatic treatment. The guidelines of the UK National Institute for Health and Care Excellence recommend brain Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to assist with the diagnosis in suspected dementia. Recently, computerised analysis of MRI scans, also known as automated brain morphometry, has shown potential to detect the brain changes characteristic of early dementia, and may therefore be a useful addition to the standard reporting performed by a neuroradiologist. The present pilot study will assess whether adding brain morphometric analysis to the usual diagnostic pathway improve diagnosis in clinical practice as an addition to the existing diagnostic pathway in a memory clinic setting. The main purpose of the study is to compare measures of the clinicians diagnostic confidence in patients with and without brain morphometry.