B1.2 State of the Art

AD is a progressive, irreversible brain disorder with no known cause or cure. It attacks and slowly steals the minds of its victims. Symptoms of the disease include memory loss, confusion, impaired judgment, personality changes, disorientation, and loss of language skills. Always fatal, AD is the most common form of irreversible dementia.

One of the most important presentation of the state of the art in the field of Alzheimer disease is /33/. A consortium of high ranked experts around the world present this knowledge:

“Importantly, heterogeneity in cognitive impairments and cortical pathology of AD require multivariate models to characterize it. Neuron, NFT, and SP densities do not fit a simple linear model for the entire population and cannot be used as the sole analytical tool for statistical analysis. … The more difficult issue, of course, is whether statistical subgroups represent subtypes of the disease. … The etiology(ies) of AD is/are not known.”/33, p. 126/7/.

“Furthermore, we need to gain a better understanding of how age-related differences in brain activation relate to differences in behavioral performance.” /33, p 222/.

“We speculate that AD may be caused by risk factors leading to sublethal vascular disease.” /33, p. 341/.

“Risk factors for the development of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) include age, family history, low level of education, head trauma, and gender. Epidemiological studies indicate that AD afflicts women one-and-a-half to three times as frequently as men.“ /33, p. 469/.

A growing number of studies and other research activities are carried out, however this high ranked international publication demonstrates in impressive manner the necessity to find a strategy for the solution of the named open problems.

One very important strategy is given by the design and application of Computer Aided Solutions for different applications * - CA*S /3, ICS4/. Grid-technology is one of the most important technical tool for the design of CA*S. The Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA) with the Globus Toolkit opened a new view for the realisation of complex solutions: