Practical and noninvasive, MRI with arterial spin labeling may substitute for PET-CT with the radiotracer 18FDG, which requires intravenous injection, for imaging the brains of patients with suspected early-stage dementia.
That’s according to researchers at Erasmus University in the Netherlands who compared the two modalities at the task on nine such patients.
Reporting their findings in Clinical Imaging, Kathleen Weyts, MD, and colleagues describe their preliminary work calculating visual agreement between ASL-MRI and FDG PET-CT in 21 brain regions.
Overall gross agreement was nearly perfect, they found, and it was identical between and within modalities.
ASL-MRI didn’t quite match FDG PET-CT on diagnostic accuracy, 56 percent (five of nine) vs. 78 percent (seven of nine), but the researchers chalk this up to fixable factors, not least their radiologists’ relative inexperience with the MRI option for early-dementia brain imaging.
They also cite technical limitations, artifacts and physiological variability as hurdles for ASL-MRI to clear if it is to challenge FDG PET-CT at this indication.
“Many of these technical issues are expected to be addressed in the near future, with more sophisticated ASL-MRI implementations and increasing expertise,” Weyts et al. write. “ASL-MRI could provide a good alternative to FDG PET-CT, if limited FDG PET-CT availability, in diabetics with difficult blood sugar control, and in the context of the rapidly increasing number of dementia patients.”
The authors also note that burgeoning PET-MRI “provides excellent opportunities for truly comparative modality studies under the same conditions.”
Dave P. has worked in journalism, marketing and public relations for more than 30 years, frequently concentrating on hospitals, healthcare technology and Catholic communications. He has also specialized in fundraising communications, ghostwriting for CEOs of local, national and global charities, nonprofits and foundations.