Diffusion Tensor Imaging in Primary Progressive Aphasia

169. ALLEGRI R, AMENGUAL A, CRHEM P, CAMPOS J, RUSSO G, COHEN G, SABE L, MEDINA C, CALVAR J, MELLI F, VAZQUEZ S.

Congreso; Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Neurology; 2013

American Academy of Neurology

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the potential of Diffusion tensor tractography in the diagnosis of variants of primary progressive aphasia. BACKGROUND: Primary progressive aphasia (PPA) is diagnosed when a progressive difficulty in language emerges as the principal feature of a neurodegenerative disease. Three main variants have been described: non-fluent/agrammatic, semantic and logopenic. Each variant is more closely related to the involvement of defined parts of the language network, usually in the left hemisphere. Diffusion tensor images allow study the different anatomical tracts in vivo patients. DESIGN/METHODS: We selected three patients with the diagnosis of different subtypes of PPA: non-fluent/ agrammatic, semantic and logopenic: They were evaluated by a neurologist and the diagnosis of PPA and its variant was determined by clinical and neurolinguistic features following the diagnostic process according Gorno Tempini et al (2011).Patients underwent 3T MRI with diffusion tensor images (DTI) and tractography was performed to evaluate the inferior longitudinal, uncinate and superior longitudinal fasciculus. RESULTS: The patient with the non-fluent/agrammatic variant showed differences in the superior longitudinal and uncinate fasciculus, logopenic variant showed fiber dispersion in the superior and inferior longitudinal fasciculus and the semantic variant in the inferior longitudinal and uncinate fasciculus. CONCLUSIONS: DTI seems to be a useful tool in thedifferential diagnosis of the variants of PPA and could be consider in the diagnosis characterization of PPA.