Software-aided analysis of F-18 FDG brain PET images

F-18 Fluorodeoxyglucose as a radiotracer reflects glucose metabolism in the resting brain. Patterns of abnormal glucose metabolism characterize various neurological disorders and FDG PET has an important role to play in neuro degenerative disorders like Alzheimer's disease dementia and Parkinson's disease. F-18 Fluorodeoxyglucose brain PET images can be analysed visually, by simple eyeballing. This approach can be prone to interpretation errors and strongly depends on the experience and training of the reading physician. The addition of a software aided approach alongside qualitative visual interpretation could significantly improve the diagnostic performance of brain PET images and a dual read approach can greatly improve the confidence of reader interpretation. Fully automated quantitative software approaches without reader input have shown improvements in terms of diagnostic accuracy compared to beginner readers. One benefit of a software-aided approach is its ability to improve reader specificity, especially for readers who may overemphasize physiological minimal changes that are part of inter-subject variability. This could be useful in early stages of the disease process wherein early changes can be unmasked and a negative scan could be useful to rule out the disease process