Neuroimaging the PET experience

Positron Emission Tomography (PET) is an in vivo molecular imaging tool which is widely used in nuclear medicine for early diagnosis and treatment follow-up of many brain diseases. PET uses biomolecules as probes which are labeled with radionuclides of short half-lives, synthesized prior to the imaging studies. These probes are called radiotracers. Fluorine-18 is a radionuclide that is routinely used in radiolabeling of neuroreceptor ligands for PET because of its favorable half-life of 109,8 min. The administration of such radiotracers into the brain provides images of transport, metaboic and neurotransmission processes on the molecular level. After a short introduction into the principles of PET this talk will mainly focus on the strategy of radiotracer development bridging from basic science to biomedical application. Successful radiotracer design as discussed in this talk provides molecular probes which are not only useful for imaging of human brain diseases. They allow also molecular neuroreceptor imaging studies in various small-animal models of disease including genetically engineerd animals. Futhermore, they provide a powerful tool for in vivo pharmacology during the process of preclinical drug development to identify new drug targets, to investigate pathophysiology, to discover potential drug candidates, and to evaluate the phramacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of drugs in vivo.