Towards the early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease: a multicriteria model structured on neuroimaging

Abstract

The Alzheimer's disease has become the most frequent cause of dementia in the last few years. Despite its high incidence, it is proved that the disease has already been present for decades when the diagnosis is made. One of the great challenges nowadays is to identify the disease on its earliest stages, because the earliest the dementia is diagnosed, the greater the chances of delaying its advance. Concerning this fact, our main proposal is the development a multicriteria model for aiding in the decision making on the diagnosis of the Alzheimer's disease. It will be made by means of the Aranau Tool, a decision support system based on ZAPROS method. The modelling and evaluation processes were conducted with the aid of a medical expert, bibliographic sources and questionnaires, which were based mainly on patients' neuroimaging tests and were tried under various aspects that are relevant to the diagnosis.