Planimetry of the medial temporal lobe: a feasible method for supporting the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease in clinical practice

Albeit a disproportionate rate of atrophy in the medial temporal lobe (MTA) represents a reliable marker of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) pathology, the measurement of MTA is not being widely used in daily clinical practice. This is mainly because the methods available to date are sophisticated and diffiult to implement (volumetric methods) or lack objectivity (visual rating scales). Here, we aimed to assess the reproducibility of computing the 2D-yrA-MTL and the efforts needed to start the usage of 2D-yrA-MTL. A series of 290 1.5T-MRI studies on 230 subjects in the age range of 65–85 years, including patients with AD (n = 100), MCI (n = 100) and matched controls (n = 90) were examined by experienced tracers (ET) and inexperienced tracers (IT). The IT got suffiiently trained by attending to a minimum of 3 cases before being able to perform the 2D-yrA-MTL on their own and without mistakes according to the corrections made by the ET. After training, the IT needed 5 minutes to perform the 2D-yrA-MTL on a new case. The intrarater and interrater reproducibility of 2D-yrAMTL was good. In conclusion, the 2D-yrA-MTL is a simple, objective and reproducible method that could be easily implemented in clinical practice.