• Philipp T Meyer and Sabine Hellwig.
• aDepartment of Nuclear Medicine bDepartment of Neurology cDepartment of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Hospital Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany.
• Curr. Opin. Neurol. 2014 Aug 1; 27 (4): 390-7.

Purpose Of ReviewTo give an update on recent findings concerning the use of single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) and positron emission tomography (PET) for differential diagnosis and prognosis of neurodegenerative parkinsonism and related disorders.Recent FindingsSeveral studies confirmed the very high diagnostic accuracy and clinical impact of imaging nigrostriatal function (most notably with [I]FP-CIT-SPECT) for diagnosing neurodegenerative parkinsonism and dementia with Lewy bodies. Accurate differential diagnosis of neurodegenerative parkinsonism can be achieved by imaging disease-specific patterns of cerebral glucose metabolism with [18F]fluorodeoxyglucose-PET, which surpasses the diagnostic accuracy of other currently available radionuclide imaging techniques.SummarySPECT and PET are established methods for the differential diagnosis of parkinsonism with significant therapeutic and prognostic impact. Given the limited accuracy of the clinical diagnosis as the reference standard, future studies with post-mortem verification are needed for validation of diagnostic imaging pattern, particularly in tauopathies.

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