Can We Reduce Diagnosis Timeframe?

Sharon Hall is joined by Keri Allen, whose father was misdiagnosed 5 years but had bvFTD. She is also a board member of the new non profit Hot Shot Challenge. This new entity will strive to help FTD families and support targeted research as its own non profit.

Her husband, Ben Allen, PhD, who loves data, was determined to cut down diagnosis time. He has created an algorithm that can detect brain atrophy in a CT before the naked eye can detect it. His company is The Algernon Project. Check out the Instagram page at @algernonproject to learn more.

Most of us see our primary care when things change in our FTD person. A CT is ordered to eliminate tumors, etc., but a CT is not the best at detecting atrophy. The result comes back from radiology as "normal" because they were looking for tumors or cancer. This begins our long journey to diagnosis due to our first misdiagnosis.