Purpose: To explore the difference of brain volume and metabolites between patients with Alzheimer disease(AD) and normal elderly with MRI and MRS. Materials and methods: Thirteen clinically diagnosed patients with AD were studied with tissue segmentation MRI to demonstrate the brain volumetric changes. Eleven of them were also examined with MR spectroscopy(MRS)to demonstrate the level of N-acetylaspartate(NAA), choline (Cho) and myo - inositol(Mi) . Same number of age and sex - matched elderly studied with same procedures was used as a control group. Results: Tissue segmentation MRI showed a significant loss of brain gray matter, and no significant difference of the volume of white matter beteen these two groups. MRS revealed significant decrease of NAA and increase of Mi in patients with AD, and no difference of Cho between these two groups. Conclusion: Brain tissue segmentation MRI can reveal the extent of atrophy of gray matter and MRS can provide the information of metabolic changes in patients with AD. The combination of these two techniques is helpful for the diagnosis of AD.%目的：探讨Alzheimer病(AD)患者与健康对照组脑组织容积和脑组织内N-乙酰天门冬氨酸(NAA)、胆碱(Cho)及肌-肌醇(Mi)的代谢特征及异同。材料和方法：对临床确诊的13例AD患者和13例健康老人进行MRI脑组织分割分析，定量研究两组脑实质容积的变化。对两组中各11例同时进行了磁共振波谱检查，定量分析两组的NAA、Cho及Mi的水平。结果：MRI脑组织分割分析显示AD组较对照组有明显的脑灰质丢失，两组脑白质的容积无明显差异。磁共振波谱分析(MRS)显示AD组NAA水平较对照组降低，Mi水平较对照组升高，两组的Cho水平无显著差异。结论：脑组织分割分析能够准确地反映AD患者脑灰质萎缩的范围；MRS能够准确提供AD患者脑部NAA、Cho和Mi的代谢情况，两者结合有助于AD的诊断。
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