No impact of attenuation and scatter correction on the interpretation of dopamine transporter SPECT in patients with clinically uncertain parkinsonian syndrome.

Purpose: The benefit from attenuation and scatter correction (ASC) of dopamine transporter (DAT)-SPECT for the detection of nigrostriatal degeneration in clinical routine is still a matter of debate. The current study evaluated the impact of ASC on visual interpretation and semi-quantitative analysis of DAT-SPECT in a large patient sample.

Methods: One thousand seven hundred forty consecutive DAT-SPECT with I-FP-CIT from clinical routine were included retrospectively.

Stereotactical normalization with multiple templates representative of normal and Parkinson-typical reduction of striatal uptake improves the discriminative power of automatic semi-quantitative analysis in dopamine transporter SPECT.

Background: The specific binding ratio (SBR) of I-FP-CIT in the putamen is widely used to support the interpretation of dopamine transporter (DAT) SPECT. Automatic methods for computation of the putamen SBR often include stereotactical normalization of the individual DAT-SPECT image to an anatomical standard space. This study compared using a single I-FP-CIT template image as target for stereotactical normalization versus multiple templates representative of normal and different levels of Parkinson-typical reduction of striatal I-FP-CIT uptake.

Quantitative distribution of AChE-positive neurons in the hippocampus of young and aged rats.

Acetylcholinesterase (AChE)-positive neurons were counted in the different layers of the rostral (septal) third, the middle third and the caudal (temporal) third of the hippocampus from 3 month (young) and 27 month old rats (aged) using AChE stained cryostat sections. The rats were treated with 3 and 2.5 mg of diisopropylphosphofluoridate/kg body weight, respectively 3 h before sacrifice.

Cytochrome oxidase histochemistry in the rat hippocampus. A quantitative methodological study.

The diaminobenzidine (DAB) method was adapted for the microphotometric determination of cytochrome c oxidase (cyt ox) in the rat hippocampus. The qualitative and quantitative investigations at the light microscopic level showed that acetone and cytochrome c pretreatment of cryostat sections resulted in a significant increase of demonstrable cyt ox activities. The final incubation medium consisted of 7.