Altered cellular composition is associated with AD progression and decline in cognition. Neuronal loss in the hippocampus is characteristic in the initial stages of AD, which could explain early memory disturbances [14, 15]. As the disease progresses, neuronal death is observed throughout the cerebral cortex. Furthermore, ~ 25% of cognitively normal individuals who die by the age of ~ 75 years also presented substantial cerebral lesions that resemble AD pathology, including amyloid plaque, NFTs, and neuronal loss [16]. Thus, the identification of the brain cellular population structure is essential for understanding neurodegenerative disease progression [17]. However, stereology protocols for counting neurons can be tedious, require extensive training, and are susceptible to technical artifacts which may lead to biased quantification of cell-type distributions [17].
