Why do you need computer-aided diagnosis solutions to support ARIA assessment?
The importance of ARIA safety monitoring
Safety monitoring for ARIA is a necessary part of treatment using amyloid-targeting monoclonal antibodies for treatment of Alzheimer’s Disease, as per regulatory requirements developed based on findings from clinical trials. Although findings may on some occasions be mild and asymptomatic, ARIA can be symptomatic, and is on rare occasions associated with life-threatening events. Hence, ARIA safety monitoring through regular brain Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans will play an important role in the follow-up of patients treated with amyloid beta-directed monoclonal antibodies.
A significant increase in radiology workload
ARIA monitoring necessitates additional MRI scans per year for each patient on amyloid-targeting monoclonal antibodies. Further, reading MRI for signs of ARIA can be significantly time consuming, particularly given that for a large number of readers, the phenomena are relatively new. Even for experts, the subtlety of the radiological phenomena can prove challenging to detect. Given the large number of people who could be eligible for the new DMTs, these ARIA monitoring brain MRI requests will impact the radiology workload significantly.
The challenging task of detecting ARIA and assessing severity
ARIA (especially at the earliest stage of ‘mild’ radiological severity) can be very subtle, and involves a detailed analysis and detection/quantification of cerebral edema (ARIA-E), microhemorrhages, and superficial siderosis (ARIA-H) on brain MRI FLAIR and T2* scans.