May 28, 2013 04:01 PM EDT By Russell Westerholm, UniversityHerald Reporter

University Hospitals (UH) Case Medical Center has developed a new imaging technique that could help diagnose Alzheimer's disease and researchers are currently testing its validity, reported the Plain Dealer.

The new technique lights up the brain's protein plaques that are characteristics of Alzheimer's, the Plain Dealer reported. The research group consists of brain and imaging specialists and they are recruiting individuals with suspected early-stage Alzheimer's to undergo a brain scan using a radioactive tracer called Amyvid.

Amyvid, approved by the Food and Drug Administration last year for this use, is an effective identifier of proteins in the brain. It uses a combination of positron emission tomography, or PET, and magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI.

According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Alzheimer's is the sixth leading cause of death in the U.S. It is a progressive brain disease that causes problems in memory, thinking and behavior. There are currently few treatments for Alzheimer's and the best those FDA-approved drugs can do is slow down the disease's progression.

The new Amyvid and PET/MRI technique does not promise to offer a treatment, Dr. James O'Donnell, director of the division of nuclear medicine at UH Case Medical Center, told the Plain Dealer. What he hopes it will do is help give researchers a clearer understanding of the disease.

"If you can help to outline the cause, you can start to find the therapy," he said. "You need to understand it."

Dr. Alan Lerner, director of the Memory and Cognition Center at UH Case Medical Center, aided O'Donnell in ensuring Amyvid's safety several years ago. He told the Plain Dealer that the presence of the amyloid plaque could represent a risk for future Alzheimer's, but that it does not guarantee a diagnoses of the brain disease.

"There are people with normal brain function who will have amyloid in the brain, and we're really at the point where we don't know what to tell them about their risk" of Alzheimer's, he said.

For now, O'Donnell and Lerner hope the Amyvid technique will help them understand how much amyloid is mild, moderate or severe and how it correlates with symptoms, reported the Plain Dealer.

"Some will take solace in the fact that there is no amyloid in their brains -- not everyone will be positive," Lerner told the Plain Dealer. "And not everyone with amyloid in their brains will have Alzheimer's."

UH is affiliated with the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and has been a part of the Cleveland community since the late-19th century. UH offers graduate studies, residencies and fellowships in numerous areas and fields.

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