Validity of the Quantitative EEG Statistical Pattern Recognition Method in Diagnosing Alzheimer’s Disease

Abstract

Aims: To evaluate the use of quantitative EEG (qEEG) statistical pattern recognition in diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Methods: qEEG was performed on 104 patients referred to a memory clinic. The qEEG results were compared to the clinical diagnosis made without access to the EEG results. Results: Of 30 patients with a clinical diagnosis of AD, 22 were test positive. Of the 74 patients without AD, 34 were test negative. The qEEG result was found to correlate with atrophy of the medial temporal lobe demonstrated on cerebral MRI (p = 0.002) and with scores on neuropsychological tests. Conclusion: The qEEG was poor at diagnosing AD, as it produced many false-positive results.

Quantitative EEG Applying the Statistical Recognition Pattern Method: A Useful Tool in Dementia Diagnostic Workup

“…Younger AD patients were separated from normal controls and from other younger clinical patients in a significant way, although the discriminatory power was not perfect, as expressed by the low AUC and LR+ and the high LR-. These results are in accordance with those of a previous study by Ommundsen et al [24], which also included an unselected group of memory clinic patients. This result might be seen as beneficial, since younger patients with AD more often have atypical clinical presentations and are generally much harder to diagnose than older patients with AD.…”

“…To sum up, only two studies on qEEG using the SPR method have been published that include patients from everyday practice: the present one and the study by Ommundsen et al [24]. Using clinical diagnoses as the gold standard, our study showed that the SPR method was excellent in discriminating DLB/PDD patients from both healthy controls and patients with other dementia disorders but poor in discriminating between AD patients and patients with other clinical diagnoses.…”

“…This study can be compared with the study by Ommundsen et al [24], as both used the EEG SPR method in the same way to evaluate individual EEG registrations on the basis of a database that had been formed earlier, not including any of the same cases. The study by Snaedal et al [25] used the method in a different way, i.e.…”

“…The first pilot study that included a small number of AD patients with dementia of moderate degree and normal controls showed that the method had good sensitivity and specificity to separate AD patients from healthy controls [23]. A second Norwegian study, including about 100 unselected patients referred to a memory clinic, could not replicate the findings from the Icelandic pilot study [24]. However, a later study from Iceland that included a large group of patients referred to a memory clinic and normal controls showed very promising results both in separating AD patients from normal controls and in separating AD patients from patients with other forms of dementia and from those with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) [25].…”

Dementia Diagnosis Differs in Men and Women and Depends on Age and Dementia Severity: Data from SveDem, the Swedish Dementia Quality Registry

“…Examination with FDG-PET and cerebrospinal fluid p-tau181 levels are able to discriminate Alzheimer’s disease in heterogeneous and unselected samples with a high accuracy [14]. In contrast, electroencephalography was shown to be poor at diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease, as it produced many false-positive results [15]. …”