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Background: There is a need to better understand the experience of patients living with Alzheimer's disease (AD) in the early stages.Objective: The aim of the study was to evaluate the perception of quality of life in patients with early-stage AD.Methods: A multicenter, non-interventional study was conducted including patients of 50-90 years of age with prodromal or mild AD, a Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) score ≥22, and a Clinical Dementia Rating-Global score (CDR-GS) of 0.5.-1.0. The Quality of Life in Alzheimer 's Disease (QoL-AD) questionnaire was used to assess health-related quality of life. A battery of self-report instruments was used to evaluate different psychological and behavioral domains. Associations between the QoL-AD and other outcome measures were analyzed using Spearman's rank correlations.Results: A total of 149 patients were included. Mean age (SD) was 72.3 (7.0) years and mean disease duration was 1.4 (1.8) years. Mean MMSE score was 24.6 (2.1). The mean QoL-AD score was 37.9 (4.5). Eighty-three percent (n = 124) of patients had moderate-to-severe hopelessness, 22.1% (n = 33) had depressive symptoms, and 36.9% (n = 55) felt stigmatized. The quality of life showed a significant positive correlation with self-efficacy and negative correlations with depression, emotional and practical consequences, stigma, and hopelessness.Conclusion: Stigma, depressive symptoms, and hopelessness are frequent scenarios in AD negatively impacting quality of life, even in a population with short disease duration and minimal cognitive impairment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Brain-dedicated PET scanner detects Alzheimer's disease using the Centiloid scale. • The effectiveness of the Centiloid Scale requiring only PET images is demonstrated. • Centiloid Scale in a brain-dedicated PET can reduce the neurology burden on PET/CT. To evaluate whether the Centiloid Scale may be used to diagnose Alzheimer's Disease (AD) pathology effectively with the only use of amyloid PET imaging modality from a brain-dedicated PET scanner. This study included 26 patients with amyloid PET images with 3 different radiotracers. All patients were acquired both on a PET/CT and a brain-dedicated PET scanner (CareMiBrain, CMB), from which 4 different reconstructions were implemented. A new pipeline was proposed and used for the PET image analysis based on the original Centiloid Scale processing pipeline, but with only PET images. The Youden's Index was employed to calculate the optimal cutoffs for diagnosis and evaluated by the AUC, accuracy, precision, and recall metrics. The Centiloid Scale (CL) processing pipeline was validated with and without the use of MR images. The CL cutoffs for AD pathology diagnosis on the PET/CT and the 4 CMB reconstructions were 34.4 ± 2.2, 43.5 ± 3.5, 51.9 ± 12.5, 57.5 ± 6.8 and 41.8 ± 1.2 respectively. Overall, for these cutoffs all metrics obtained the maximum score. The Centiloid scale applied to PET images allows for AD pathology diagnosis. The CMB scanner can be used with the Centiloid scale to automatically assist in the diagnosis of AD pathology, relieving the large burden of neurodegenerative diseases on a traditional PET/CT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]