Dr. Paul Yushevich

Professor of Radiology at the University of Pennsylvania

Co-director of the Neuroimaging Core of the University of Pennsylvania Alzheimer's Disease Research Center (ADRC).

Title

Leveraging postmortem brain imaging to inform Alzheimer’s disease biomarkers

Abstract

Alzheimer’s disease research has entered a new phase with the availability of disease-modifying treatments that can measurably slow cognitive decline. But not all participants benefit equally from these treatments, and some experience potentially serious side effects. It is hypothesized that the heterogeneity of neurodegenerative disease is a major factor contributing to variation in treatment response. Heterogeneity is expressed in various ways, but one of them is the common occurrence of multiple neurodegenerative pathologies (beta-amyloid, tau, alpha-synuclein, TDP-43, cerebrovascular) in the brains of individuals with dementia. This talk will explore ways in which combination of in vivo neuroimaging, postmortem MRI, and serial histology imaging can shed light on impacts of these co-pathologies on the brain, and ways in which such datasets can be used to derive in vivo neuroimaging biomarkers indicative of co-pathology burden.

Biography

Paul Yushkevich is a Professor of Radiology at the University of Pennsylvania and a co-director of the Neuroimaging Core of the University of Pennsylvania Alzheimer's Disease Research Center (ADRC). His research group works on computational techniques for advanced analysis of multi-modality biomedical medical imaging data, with a particular focus on postmortem brain MRI and applications to better understanding, detection, and treatment of Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders. Development of open-source software for biomedical image analysis is another major direction of his group.