Prestigious Women Researchers Lecture Series I Elena Rodríguez-Vieitez: 'Neuroimaging and fluid biomarkers with prognostic value in aging and hereditary dementias'

Detecting early stages of neurodegenerative diseases remains a complex challenge. While a major focus of research in Alzheimer’s disease has been on detecting amyloid and tau protein accumulation in the brain, a more comprehensive understanding of brain pathology and peripheral mechanisms is needed. In this talk, I will present recent findings using longitudinal multi-modal MRI, diffusion-weighted imaging and PET imaging combined with fluid biomarkers, in aging and in hereditary forms of Alzheimer’s disease and frontotemporal dementia. Our hope is to develop accurate biomarkers that predict cognitive decline and clinical progression from very early preclinical stages of brain disease, with promising potential for use in the clinic.

About Elena Rodríguez-Vieitez

Elena Rodriguez-Vieitez is a researcher in neuroscience and docent in medical imaging at Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. She performs research on multi-modal MRI-PET imaging to understand the dynamics of protein aggregation in the brain, neuroinflammation and brain structure in neurodegenerative diseases. She is a graduate in physics from the University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain, and PhD in nuclear engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, USA.