A new Centiloid method for ¹⁸F-florbetaben and ¹⁸F-flutemetamol PET without conversion to PiB

We developed a new method to directly calculate Centiloid (CL) units of ¹⁸F-florbetaben (FBB) and ¹⁸F-flutemetamol (FMM) without conversion to the PiB standardized uptake value ratio (SUVR).

Paired FBB and FMM PET scans were obtained from 20 Alzheimer’s disease–related cognitive impairment patients, 16 old controls, and 20 young controls. We investigated the correlations between the FBB and FMM CL units using the direct comparison of FBB-FMM CL (dcCL) method and the standard CL method and compare differences in FBB and FMM CL units between dcCL method and the standard method.

Following the conversion of FBB or FMM SUVRs into CL units, a direct relationship was formed between the FBB or FMM SUVRs and the CL units using dcCL method (FBB dcCL = 151.42 × FBB dcSUVR − 142.24 and FMM dcCL = 148.52 × FMM dcSUVR − 137.09). The FBB and FMM CL units were highly correlated in both our method (R² = 0.97, FMM dcCL = 0.97 × FBB dcCL + 1.64) and the standard method (R² = 0.97, FMM CLstandard = 0.79 × FBB CLstandard + 1.36). However, the CL variations between FBB and FMM were smaller when calculated by dcCL method (6.15) than when calculated by the previous method (10.22; P = 0.01).

Our findings suggest that our direct comparison of FBB-FMM method, rather than the standard method, is a reasonable way to convert FBB or FMM SUVRs into CL units, at least in environments where FBB or FMM ligands are used frequently.