In either setting, the intensity of the evaluation is often physician-dependent, though clear guidelines exist suggesting appropriate testing and criteria to be used in the diagnosis. In contrast, the range of accuracies for imaging findings is much more limited, typically of the order of 10% to 15%. Imaging procedures are often well standardized, and commonly performed by

technicians as a matter of fixed routine. While the interpretation of imaging results is often a matter of skill and expertise, much like clinical diagnosis,14 AD diagnosis has matured to the extent that many papers report, quantitative, measured results, rather than an interpretation of patterns. Thus, much of the variance is Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical removed. Thus, while the best clinicians under favorable circumstances achieve near-perfect diagnostic accuracy (at least with respect to sensitivity), some clinical evaluations Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical suffer much lower accuracy. Neuroimaging procedures, especially with measured (rather than interpreted) outcomes, are much more consistent and much less dependent, on individual skills. It. appears, thus, that ncuroimaging procedures can be of significant value in circumstances where an expert clinician is not click here readily available. Complementing likelihood ratios As demonstrated earlier in Figure 1, clinical diagnosis usually involves a tradeoff between sensitivity and

specificity, even when using standardized clinical Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical scales. Partly as a function of the scales used, partly depending on explicit or implicit cutoff selection, and partly due to imperfect, reliability, Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical clinical diagnosis commonly offers either good sensitivity or good specificity, but not. both. On average, specificity is better than sensitivity (Figure 2). Further, circumstances tend to emphasize one or the other. For example, if treatment is toxic or difficult to institute, specificity should probably be maximized. On the other hand, if treatment, is benign, but needs to be initiated in the early stages of the disease, sensitivity is more important. This is exemplified

most clearly by recent Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical suggestions of the relationship between dementia and statin use39 Methisazone or suggestion of early cholinesterase use in mild cognitive impairment (MCI):40 Ncuroimaging may help distinguish those individuals with MCI likely to develop AD.41 Studies that compared both clinical diagnosis and imaging findings to eventual neuropathological diagnosis are especially noteworthy. Hoffman et al,15 for example, achieved sensitivity/specificity values of 63%/100% for the clinical diagnosis of probable AD in a small sample; the corresponding values for the parietotemporal metabolic deficit were 93%/63%. In this case, therefore, imaging was not superior overall to clinical examination. However, because imaging appeared more sensitive and clinical diagnosis, more specific, overall accuracy could be substantially improved if the two were combined. Unfortunately, the sensitivity advantage of imaging is not always reproduced.