Amyloid PET in the diagnostic workup of neurodegenerative disease

Several radiotracers have been employed to bind amyloid plaques in the brain for the differential diagnosis of neurodegenerative disease, open the possibility to measure in vivo pathogenic processes implicated in Alzheimer disease (AD) and have the potential to detect disease processes at the earliest stages with a potential role in clinical trials’ longitudinal assessment. Visual reading is clinically adequate in clearly positive or negative cases but the adoption of validated and standardized quantification methods of amyloid-PET to diagnose AD in research and clinical settings has become essential. The present Pictorial Essay presenting a case series of nine patients describes the current role of amy-PET imaging elucidating the typical assessment, the possible artifacts and pitfalls occurring in the clinical scenario, focusing also on the development of quantification methods in the diagnostic workup of neurodegenerative disease.