AI Improves Alzheimer's Imaging

Confirming a diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease requires an expensive PET scan that uses a high dose of full-body radiation. With seed grant support from the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI), a group of Stanford researchers can now diagnose Alzheimer's Disease just as successfully by applying artificial intelligence (AI) to low-dose PET scans and simultaneously acquired MRI images. "This work has the advantage for the patients of being safer, lower dose, faster, cheaper all the things you'd want as a patient," said Greg Zaharchuk, professor of radiology at Stanford University and 2018 HAI seed grantee. Using artificial intelligence, Zaharchuk's team has become adept at what's called image transformation. They can take one image or set of images and use a type of AI called a convolutional neural network (CNN) to produce a new set of images as the output.