Compartmental modeling of F-DOPA PET images from Parkinson's patients

Parkinson's disease is the second neurodegenerative condition worldwide with more than 4.6 million cases. Positron Emission Tomography (PET) in combination with compartmental modeling (CM) has been used to improve clinical diagnosis by providing quantitative parameters for several neurological disorders. In this work, we implemented an acquisition protocol of dynamic images in two periods of time, with data acquired in the early and late postinjection times. We also assessed the graphical methods of Patlak and Logan [1,2] using a reference tissue model for Parkinsonian and atypical Parkinsonian patients to obtain the kinetic influx constant (K-t) and the distribution volume ratio (DVR). The results obtained here were consistent with previous studies and support the usefulness of these methods for medical diagnosis.