Assessment of whole brain N-acetylaspartate – a new additional MR marker in mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease

Introduction: Biochemical abnormalities in AD and MCI have been investigated in vivo with localised proton MR spectroscopy (1H-MRS) providing data on small tissue samples of grey and white matter. Instead of using small tissue samples for MRS we used the recently proposed Whole Brain N-acetylaspartate (WBNAA) method to obtain a quantitative read out on a neuronal marker, which should provide useful information in addition to morphological information from MR imaging. We report its use in a cohort of clinically and neuropsychologically well characterised patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and early Alz…