I used a pre-existing LUT in MetaMorph to qualitatively analyze an image from the entorhinal cortex of an AD patient. The human eye detects variation in colors much better than in 256 grayscale. The application of the LUT allows for the recognition of dense amyloid cores, which separate neuritic plaques from diffuse plaques, within beta-amyloid deposits. Hof I used SigmaScanPro 5.0 to perform image analysis. After calibrating the software to a 50 micron bar on the image, I found the area and major and minor axes of the seven NFT present in this image.
Descriptive analysis includes calculation of averages and standard deviations.
This is of course not an actual or accurate progression of the disease since it was created from images from four difference patients and possibly from varying cortical regions. However, it does give us a chance to visually consider what is taking place in the cortex as a patient progresses to later stages of Alzheimer's disease. I created a 15 minute presentation of my image analysis of the neuropathological hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease. Select portions of this Microsoft PowerPoint presentation are available from this link, or from my homepage.