The National Institute on Aging (NIA) awarded a $268,730 Project Grant (CFDA 93.866 - Aging Research) to the University of Massachusetts to develop and validate multimodal imaging biomarkers for frontotemporal dementia (FTD). The project aims to leverage the university's expertise in magnetic resonance (MR)-based thalamic nuclei segmentation and positron emission tomography (PET) super-resolution techniques to derive quantitative measures of thalamic atrophy, connectivity, and hypometabolism as potential FTD biomarkers.
Through this 2-year award, the researchers will integrate the MR and PET imaging frameworks to analyze FTD patient data, including both sporadic and familial C9ORF72+ cases. The goal is to establish the clinical utility of the thalamic nuclei-derived biomarkers in distinguishing FTD subtypes from cognitively normal subjects. The work will also characterize the temporal progression of these multimodal imaging biomarkers through event-based modeling and longitudinal analyses. This research is expected to inform FTD disease characterization and potentially support therapeutic development efforts for this challenging neurodegenerative disorder.
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