In the workup for the presence of degenerative dementia in elderly patients, the ability to take a picture of the brain has traditionally been courtesy of computerized tomography (CT). MRIs were (and basically still are) cost-prohibitive. CT scanning is even covered as part of the workup by Medicare. Who knows, but if an increasing body of evidence continues to filter out of the literature describing common morphological patterns (shrinkage of the hippocampus — a memory center in the brain) seen in the Alzheimer brain best via MR scanning, then this might be time for more clinical correlation.

Among healthy controls and patients with mild cognitive impairment, baseline hippocampal volume and the rate of shrinkage during follow-up were the strongest predictors of developing Alzheimer’s, Wouter Henneman, M.D., of VU University Medical Center here, and colleagues reported in the March 17 issue of Neurology. 

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