Comparison of positron emission tomography (PET), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computerized tomography (CT)

The authors studied the relative value of CT, MRI and PET in the investigation of abnormalities produced by head injuries, utilizing receiver operator characteristic curve analyses. The accuracy of the readers separating normal from abnormal scans was quite high for each modality. The average accuracy for PET, CT and MRI was about the same. There was significant disagreement among readers using CT and MRI in identifying the nature of brain abnormalities in head injured patients. The PET readers were quite similar in their ability to detect abnormal studies in the head injury patient. However, the PET readers differed in their ability to detect true negatives from the normal population. (author). 2 refs.; 1 tab