The software used to process the images taken by satellites from space has created a simple method to study Alzheimer's disease among the population. It is the AlzTools 3D Slicer tool, which uses spatial routines to analyze magnetic resonance images and which has been developed by computer engineers from the Spanish company Elecnor Deimos and by experts from the Polytechnic University of Madrid, based on accumulated experience. for several years dedicated to developing software for the Envisat mission of the European Space Agency (ESA).
“When you work with a satellite image, you need to establish routines to extract information from a part of the image, even from a single pixel in particular , which can be a field or a crop,” explains Carlos Fernández de la Peña, from Deimos, which ensures that the process is very similar to what doctors have to do to understand the results of brain scans and identify dysfunctions. For example in the region of the hippocampus , whose atrophy is related to several neurodegenerative diseases.
This new tool is already being used for Alzheimer's research at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Castilla la Mancha.
