Diagnostic value of arterial spin labeling for Alzheimer’s disease: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Background: Arterial spin labeling (ASL) is a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technique that offers a non-invasive approach for measuring cerebral blood perfusion (CBF). CBF serves as a marker of neuronal activity, and ASL has demonstrated the potential to detect reductions in CBF associated with early-stage neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Consequently, ASL has garnered growing interest as a potential diagnostic tool for AD. Despite the promise of ASL for diagnosing AD, there is a paucity of data regarding the pooled specificity and sensitivity of this technique in this context. The purpose of this systematic review and meta-analysis is to identify the accuracy of ASL in the diagnosis of AD with international clinical diagnosis as the gold standard. Methods: Four English databases and four Chinese databases were searched from their inception to 30 November 2023. Two independent reviewers extracted relevant information from the eligible articles, while the quality assessment of included studies was assessed using the Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies 2 (QUADAS-2). The meta-analysis was carried out using the area under the Receiver Operator Characteristic (ROC) curves (AUC) and sensitivity and specificity values. Meta-DiSc 1.4 was used to perform the statistical analysis. STATA 16.0 was used to perform publication bias and sensitivity analysis. Results: Of 844 relevant articles retrieved, 10 studies involving 494 participants (AD patients = 262, healthy controls = 232) met the inclusion criteria and were included in the meta-analysis. However, the quality of studies was low based on QUADAS-2. The pooled sensitivity, specificity, positive likelihood ratio, negative likelihood ratio, and diagnostic odds ratio of ASL for diagnosing AD was 0.83 (95% CI: 0.78–0.87), 0.81 (95% CI: 0.76–0.86), 4.52 (95% CI: 3.40–6.00), 0.22 (95% CI: 0.17–0.28), and 19.31(95% CI: 12.30–30.31), respectively. The pooled AUC = 0.8932. There was low heterogeneity across the included studies. Finally, sensitivity analysis suggested that the results were reliable. Conclusion: ASL is an effective and accurate method for the diagnosis of AD. However, due to the limited quantity and quality of the included studies, the above conclusions need to be verified by more studies. PROSPERO registration: PROSPERO registration number: CRD42023484059.