[...]... Pediatric nuclear medicine has special needs, because of the size and age of the patients A selection of topics is presented in Chap 14 1.4 Basics of Diagnostic Nuclear Medicine The second section of the book deals with the basics in radiopharmaceuticals, instrumentation and image processing The potential variety of radiopharmaceuticals which may be developed is unlimited, keeping nuclear medicine in... bringing the advantages of PET to the general nuclear medicine clinic These hybrid devices have been discontinued, and the new trend is merging of standard imaging equipment, e.g PET with CT, and SPECT with CT Combining both imaging modalities in one system, which appeared promising in the previous version of the book, has become reality CT not only provides images of diagnostic quality, but is also used for... passed away unexpectedly The group of Nijmegen, Netherlands has prepared the text of Chap 7 for the current edition In order to localize an infectious process, we need procedures with high sensitivity for all body regions The studies available and their clinical effectiveness are discussed A typical diagnostic dilemma, posed daily, is the differential diagnosis of inflammation versus infection, e.g after... of neurotransmitter storage, release, and binding to specific receptors The assessment of neurotransmission by emission tomography has attracted the interest of neuroscientists with an expertise in nuclear medicine and has raised high expectations among clinical neurologists and psychiatrists, many of which have been realized 2.2 Physiologic and Biochemical Basis of Radionuclide Brain Imaging The central... histologic characterization and assist in treatment planning Developments in morphologic imaging and concurrent advances in biochemical imaging have therefore completely modified the role of radiology and nuclear medicine in the assessment of patients with brain tumors The clinical use of radioactive tracers in neurooncology has followed their use for other purposes This is the case of 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose,... safety of thrombolytic therapy in acute ischemic stroke Proceedings of the meeting of the SPECT Safe Thrombolysis Study Collaborators and the members of the Brain Imaging Council of the Society of Nuclear Medicine Stroke28:1830-1834 Andersen AR, Gram L, Kjaer L, Fuglsang-Frederiksen A, Herning M, Lassen NA, Dam M (1988) SPECT in partial epilepsy: identifying side of the focus Acta Neurol Scand 78 [Suppl... cerebral morphologic heterogeneity, neuronal circuitry complexity, neurotransmitter specificity, non-uniform blood flow and metabolism, and presence of the blood–brain barrier (BBB) Each experimental and diagnostic procedure must be tailored to examine the physiologic and biochemical process of interest The methodological research has been aimed at constructing instruments to detect and reconstruct the... hypometabolism actually precedes both symptoms and the clinical diagnosis of AD Thus, the 18F-FDG PET scan appears to have excellent sensitivity in mildly-symptomatic patients and performs well in the diagnostic setting Patients with frontal or frontotemporal dementia have also typical metabolic patterns In instances of autopsy-proven Pick’s disease, and in patients with a neuropsychometric suggestion... abnormalities (Brucke et al 1993; Seibyl et al 1994; Marek et al 1996) The assessment of presynaptic function may permit both the early detection of PD and a differential diagnosis between PD and progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) in a single study since PSP is associated with a more uniform loss of DAT compared to PD which shows more specific loss in the posterior putamen (Fig 2.2) (Ilgin et al 1995) This goal... (Lee et al 2000) VMAT2 specific binding using DTBZ and PET are greater in patients who have higher Hoehn and Yahr severity scores The role of methods for the assessment of presynaptic function is not diagnostic, except for patients who do not respond to dopaminergic treatment, or for experimental treatment definition and monitoring, including stem cell transplantation and electrical deep brain stimulation . Overview 2 1.4 Basics of Diagnostic Nuclear Medicine 4 1.5 Future Perspective 4 In the present revised volume of Diagnostic Nuclear Medicine, the advancements. the publication of the fi rst edition of Diagnostic Nuclear Medicine rapid progress has occurred in the fi eld of nuclear medicine imaging. Multimodality