Alois Alzheimer first described the syndrome associated with his name in a conference in 1906 and then published a paper that accurately described this condition, both the clinical presentation and the pathology, in 1907. The patient who he described was 51 years of age when she first presented to him with dementia and psychosis, at an age close to the average life-expectancy of that region of Germany at that time. He also described her presentation as a rare, presenile form of dementia, and pathologically she had severe atherosclerosis as well as a form of changes in the brain that he saw for the first time due to the newly available silver stains, senile plaques and neurofibrillary changes, which are now the pathological hallmarks of this disease. Two factors have brought Alzheimer's disease from a rare condition to what is now the leading factor associated with death in the developed world: 1) the presence of the senile plaques and neurofibrillary changes in the most common form of dementia in the elderly, and 2) the progressive increase in life-expectancy (about 25 years since Alzheimer's time) leading to a huge growth in the elderly population in the age range which is most susceptible to this condtion.

The great developments that have led to this handbook are the advances in the technology for imaging the brain of the living person. In the last 50 years, a wide variety of techniques have emerged, including measurement of electromagnetic signals, anatomy, functional activity, chemical composition, and neuropathological changes. These techniques are not yet able to image individually the senile plaques and neurofibrillary changes that are seen by the pathologists at autopsy, but they are reflecting Alzheimer pathological changes more and more closely. Now, these techniques allow imaging of brain regions that estimates the presence of senile plaques that are seen by the pathologists at autopsy, and ligands for neurofibrillary changes are under active development, so new techniques are able to report more and more accurate estimations of pathological changes of Alzheimer's disease. Other techniques reviewed in this handbook are able to convey critical information about the function and connectivity of the brain that is disrupted by Alzheimer pathology.

This handbook was developed to provide an overview of the state of the art of brain-imaging approaches that have recently emerged to reveal the critical characteristics of brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease. The book was initially conceived as an opportunity to present the major findings produced from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI), which has been led by Michael Weiner, and has led to the publication over 200 hundred papers on imaging the brains of individuals along the transition from elderly normal to mild cognitive impairment to mild dementia. This book provides numerous chapters that examine this critical phase of Alzheimer's disease, but chapters also discuss diagnosis, early biomarkers, late changes, the role of vascular disease, and treatment. The book drew from presentations at the International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease (ICAD), which met in Hawaii in July, 2010, and the associated Alzheimer's Imaging Consortium, chaired by Sandra Black and Giovanni Frisoni.

This book is organized in 10 sections. Each section addresses a particular neuroimaging modality that has been found to be useful in understanding or diagnosing Alzheimer's disease. Each section has an introduction to the particular technique and how it has the potential for informing clinical care or evaluating novel therapies for Alzheimer's patients. The chapters provide clinicians with specific information as to how the particular neuroimaging technique is or can be useful in a clinical setting, including the gamut from Radiology to Primary Care and address specific advances in the various types of neuroimaging. The book includes brief overviews of imaging of Alzheimer's disease and reviews fundamental principles for neuroimaging pathological changes that it causes, with an emphasis on practical and future applications.

The basic concept of this compendium is that each section provides an overview of the use of brain imaging in the specific area of Alzheimer's disease neuroimaging. The chapters in this book provide the field with perspectives on the value of the various imaging techniques for screening for Alzheimer's disease, determining the early markers of the disease, making the diagnosis, following the progression of the disease, determining the variability of the manifestation of Alzheimer's disease, and estimating the utility of these metrics of disease severity for examining the effects of treatments. However, this work has not addressed all of the numerous complexities of Alzheimer's disease, including co-occurrence, Parkinson's disease, fronto-temporal dementia, etc., and only briefly touches on vascular risk factors and subcortical ischemic vasculopathy.

The target audience for this book is the clinical community, including medical students, residents-in-training with an interest in neuroimaging, as well as clinicians and faculty in fields where neuroimaging of Alzheimer's disease is and will become even more critical as automatic quatnification methods start coming on-line and available for practicing clinicians taking care of the affected patients (Family Practitioners, Geriatric Medicine, Neurologists, Radiologist, Psychiatrists). The overview is relatively brief but highly accessible for students, clinicians, and other researchers studying Alzheimer's disease, since a need to understand the clinical aspects of the disease are critical for guiding basic investigations.

Alzheimer's disease is a common problem which is becoming progressively more prevalent and burdensome to the World. Through better recognition of this disease and more precise diagnosis, led by brain imaging in the appropriate clinical context, it is our sincere hope that mankind can conquer this terrible disease.