Brain structural indicators of β-amyloid neuropathology

Recent efforts demonstrated the efficacy of identifying early-stage neuropathology of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) through lumbar puncture cerebrospinal fluid assessment and positron emission tomography (PET) radiotracer imaging. These methods are effective yet are invasive, expensive, and not widely accessible. We extend and improve the multiscale structural mapping (MSSM) procedure to develop structural indicators of β-amyloid neuropathology in preclinical AD, by capturing both macrostructural and microstructural properties throughout the cerebral cortex using a structural MRI. We find that the MSSM signal is regionally altered in clear positive and negative cases of preclinical amyloid pathology (N = 220) when cortical thickness alone or hippocampal volume is not. It exhibits widespread effects of amyloid positivity across the posterior temporal, parietal, and medial prefrontal cortex, surprisingly consistent with the typical pattern of amyloid deposition. The MSSM signal is significantly correlated with amyloid PET in almost half of the cortex, much of which overlaps with regions where beta-amyloid accumulates, suggesting it could provide a regional brain ‘map’ that is not available from systemic markers such as plasma markers. [Display omitted] •We develop structural indicators of β-amyloid neuropathology in asymptomatic adults.•Procedure captures structural features at multiple scale (MSSM) throughout the cortex.•MSSM signal is correlated with amyloid PET in almost half of the cerebral cortex.•It provides enhanced ability for the detection of amyloid positivity validated by PET.•MSSM may provide a proxy metric for ‘A′ as well as ‘N′ of the A-T-N framework.