Psychiatric onset of prodromal dementia with Lewy bodies: Current insights into neuroimaging tools.

Purpose: Our article is dedicated to describing the state-of-the-art in imaging techniques for assessing prodromal dementia with Lewy bodies (pro-DLB) with a psychiatric-onset.

Materials and methods: Imaging biomarker techniques are discussed.

Results: (123)-I-2-ß-carbomethoxy-3ß-(4-iodophenyl)-N-(3-fluoropropyl) nortropane single photon emission computed tomography (123I-FP-CIT SPECT) seems to be a promising method as it reveals abnormalities in pro-DLB with a psychiatric-onset. New potential biomarkers can be revealed via novel techniques, such as manual segmentation in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which helps detect atrophy of the substantia innominata in pro-DLB with a psychiatric-onset as opposed to an onset with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). FDG-PET can also help us distinguish patients with mixed pro-DLB from those pro-DLB patients with a psychiatric-onset or MCI-onset. Changes in large-scale networks in the posterior standard mode and in attentional networks could be early signs in resting-state functional MRI to characterise pro-DLB.

Conclusions: In conclusion, there is a wide range of techniques that need to be explored in large-scale studies and are of promising value in understanding pro-DLB with a psychiatric-onset.