Laboratoire Medics Laboratory

There are more than 500,000 people with dementia in Canada - one elderly out of eleven. This number is expected to grow in the coming decades as the population ages, bringing with it significant economic and societal consequences for these individuals, their caregivers and the community at large. Alzheimer's disease is responsible for more than two-thirds of these cases. The overlap in cognitive symptoms between normal aging and those associated with Alzheimer's disease, especially in its early phase, complicates its clinical diagnosis. Clinicians need additional tools and methodologies to measure this decline quantitatively and thus achieve a diagnosis with higher confidence and as early as possible, before patients have crossed the threshold of dementia. Researchers in the MEDICS Laboratory, under the leadership of Dr. Simon Duchesne, eng., Ph.D., attempt to address this problem by proposing new techniques for analysis of brain magnetic resonance images. This noninvasive neuroimaging modality provides anatomic images of the human brain in vivo with high resolution. MEDICS researchers were among the first to use machine-learning algorithms to extract magnetic resonance image features that are specific to Alzheimer's disease, and can therefore serve as putative biomarkers. The MEDICS Laboratory is housed within the Centre de recherche de l'Institut universitaire de santé mentale de Québec, a research institute affiliated with Université Laval.