Brain hypometabolism in rare genetic neurodegenerative disease: Niemann-Pick disease type C, spinocerebellar ataxia and Huntington disease assessed by FDG PET.

Abstract

Brain metabolic imaging using 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) Positron Emission Tomography (PET) with contemporaneous low-dose CT may be used to assess neurodegenerative diseases. In contrast to oncology whole-body FDG PET, qualitative assessment alone in brain FDG PET is subjective and vulnerable to visual interference due to high physiologic background activity. Therefore, mild changes in brain metabolism may be visually undetectable by qualitative interpretation alone, resulting in diagnostic inaccuracy. To overcome this, some institutions may employ an objective comparison to a normal reference database. To date, there is limited literature describing brain metabolic changes in rare genetic..