Yale PET Center / PET Talks: "Current Challenges in PiB PET Imaging"

http://tauruspet.med.yale.edu/wiki/index.php/PET_Talks!

Abstract:  PET imaging with Pittsburgh Compound-B (or PiB) has been widely applied to assess the presence and accumulation of fibrillar amyloid-beta plaques in the living human brain. These studies include investigations of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), mild cognitive impairment, normal aging, early onset familial AD, and anti-amyloid therapy evaluation. Different PET acquisition and analysis methods have been applied that range in complexity and quantitative rigor. PET amyloid imaging can be further complicated by difficulties related to nonspecific radioligand uptake, reference region definition and varying levels of cerebral atrophy and neurodegeneration. This presentation will review some of these biological and technical factors in the context of current challenges in amyloid imaging that include robust definition of PiB(+)/(-) retention thresholds and establishing correspondence between in vivo PiB PET and post-mortem correlates of amyloid load across multiple subjects.