The single Photon Emission Computed Tomography -SPECT- is a Nuclear Medicine procedure created from the original experiences with the Positron Emission Tomography -PET-. This technique is able to report about the brain metabolism using F18-Deoxiglucose. Based in previous inf ormation about the cerebral perfusion changes together with the metabolism, SPECT can report the cortical activity.
The radionuclide Tc99m labelling compounds like HMPAO or ECD are the radiopharmaceuticals used in brain Spect studies. In both cases the intensity of uptake is function of cerebral perfusion and they remain a period of time in the brain tissue in arder to obtain the information for the images. Nowadays, other radiopharmaceuticals are tested in arder to allow the measurements of neuroreceptors concentration.
For the analysis, transaxial, sagital and coronal tomographic slices are obtained through complex mathematical images processing as well as functional, quantitative and 3D representations.
The clinical use of brain perfusion studies are the differential diagnosis of dementias, evaluation of Pick Disease, Supranuclear Progressive Paralisis, AIDS, Huntington' s Disease, Epilepsy, Parkinson' s Disease, Depression, damage by Drugs. Another area for application of this technique is the activation analysis studies in the cortex under specific stimulations.
Today, new flow and neuroreceptor tracers are in the development and in addition with relevant technological changes and more powerful processing tools like fussion of images, will open a window to the wide field of clinical research over the patients with neurological or behaviour diseases.
Lovera F. , C. ., & Lillo G. , R. (1998). Tomografia computada de emision foton unico (SPECT) encefalica, en el diagnostico diferencial de las demencias. Revista Hospital Clínico Universidad De Chile, 1998(9), pp. 5–10. https://doi.org/10.5354/2735-7996.1.80996
