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Amyloid PET in the diagnostic workup of neurodegenerative disease

  • Pictorial Essay
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Abstract

Several radiotracers have been employed to bind amyloid plaques in the brain for the differential diagnosis of neurodegenerative disease, open the possibility to measure in vivo pathogenic processes implicated in Alzheimer disease (AD) and have the potential to detect disease processes at the earliest stages with a potential role in clinical trials’ longitudinal assessment. Visual reading is clinically adequate in clearly positive or negative cases but the adoption of validated and standardized quantification methods of amyloid-PET to diagnose AD in research and clinical settings has become essential. The present Pictorial Essay presenting a case series of nine patients describes the current role of amy-PET imaging elucidating the typical assessment, the possible artifacts and pitfalls occurring in the clinical scenario, focusing also on the development of quantification methods in the diagnostic workup of neurodegenerative disease.

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Funding

All the authors declare that they did not receive any financial support for this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nuclear Medicine Unit, Fondazione Istituto G. Giglio, Cefalù, Italy

    Pierpaolo Alongi

  2. Department of Biomedicine and Prevention, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy

    Agostino Chiaravalloti

  3. IRCCS Neuromed, Pozzilli, IT, Italy

    Agostino Chiaravalloti

  4. Department of Biomedical, Experimental and Clinical Sciences “Mario Serio”, University of Florence, Florence, Italy

    Valentina Berti

  5. Nuclear Medicine, ICS Maugeri SpA SB-IRCCS, Pavia, Italy

    Cecilia Vellani & Giuseppe Trifirò

  6. Nuclear Medicine Unit, Nuovo Ospedale S. Stefano of Prato, Via suor Niccolina Infermiera 20, Prato, Italy

    Giulia Puccini & Stelvio Sestini

  7. Division of Neuroscience, Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, Milan, Italy

    Giulia Carli & Daniela Perani

  8. Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), Genoa, Italy

    Andrea Chincarini

  9. IRCCS Ospedale Policlinico San Martino, Genoa, Italy

    Silvia Morbelli

  10. Nuclear Medicine Unit, Department of Health Sciences, University of Genoa, Genoa, Italy

    Silvia Morbelli

Authors
  1. Pierpaolo Alongi
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  2. Agostino Chiaravalloti
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  3. Valentina Berti
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  4. Cecilia Vellani
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  5. Giuseppe Trifirò
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  6. Giulia Puccini
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  7. Giulia Carli
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  8. Andrea Chincarini
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  9. Silvia Morbelli
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  10. Daniela Perani
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  11. Stelvio Sestini
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Stelvio Sestini.

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All the procedures performed in studies involving human participants were following ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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All the authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Alongi, P., Chiaravalloti, A., Berti, V. et al. Amyloid PET in the diagnostic workup of neurodegenerative disease. Clin Transl Imaging 9, 383–397 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40336-021-00428-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40336-021-00428-x

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