Molecular imaging of brain tumors with radiolabeled choline PET.

Several positron emission tomography (PET) radiopharmaceuticals have been emerged in the last decade as feasible in the management of brain lesions, due to the low performance in this field of the 18F-fluoro-deoxyglucose (18F-FDG), for its high physiological gradient of distribution in the brain. Beyond its usefulness in prostate cancer imaging, the radiolabeled choline is becoming a promising tool in diagnosing benign and malignant lesions of the brain, due to a very low rate of distribution in normal white and grey matters. The aim of our review was to assess the real impact of the radiolabeled choline PET/CT in the management of brain benign lesions, brain tumors, and metastases.

Current status and future challenges of brain imaging with (18)F-DOPA PET for movement disorders.

Objective: Parkinson's disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder (ND) due to progressive loss of dopaminergic neurons in the basal ganglia. The correct differential diagnosis of this disease with parkinsonian syndromes (PS) or with essential tremor (ET) is a diagnostic dilemma, considering that only PD is responsive to treatment with levodopa. Traditional imaging fails to diagnose PD because morphological alterations in the brain are usually detectable only at advanced stages.