Table 1.

Summary of evidence for use of imaging markers for subject selection and as outcome measures in clinical trials in pre-dementia Alzheimer’s disease

	Imaging technique	Pathological specificity for Alzheimer’s disease	Prediction of progression in cognitively normal	Prediction of progression in MCI	Reproducibility	Sensitivity to change	Response to treatment
Molecular	Amyloid PET	Strong	Moderate	Strong	Good	Moderate	Established
	Tau PET	Preliminary evidence with promising results	Unknown	Unknown	Preliminary evidence	Unknown	Unknown
Functional	ASL	Moderate	Weak	Weak	Moderate	Preliminary evidence	Preliminary evidence for exercise intervention
	rs-fMRI	Moderate	Unknown	Weak	Moderate	Preliminary evidence	Preliminary evidence for symptomatic drugs
	FDG-PET	Moderate	Moderate/good	Strong	Good	Good	Established for symptomatic drugs
Structural	T1: Hippocampal volume	Moderate	Good; although long follow-up is needed	Strong	Good	Good	Established, although few effective studies
	T1: Cortical atrophy	Moderate	Moderate/good depending on regions; long follow-up is needed	Good	Good	Good	Unknown
	DTI	Moderate	Weak	Moderate	Moderate	Unknown	Unknown

AD Alzheimer’s disease, ASL arterial spin labelling, DTI diffusion tensor imaging, FDG fluorodeoxyglucose, MCI mild cognitive impairment, PET positron emission tomography, rs-fMRI resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging