Amide proton transfer imaging of Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease.

Amide proton transfer (APT) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is an important molecular imaging technique at the protein level in tissue. Neurodegenerative diseases have a high likelihood of causing abnormal protein accumulation in the brain, which can be detected by APT MRI. This article briefly introduces the principles and image processing technology of APT MRI, and reviews the current state of research on Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease using this technique. Early applications of this approach in these two neurodegenerative diseases are encouraging, which also suggests continued technical development and larger clinical trials to gauge the value of this technique.