Cerebral serotonin transporter measurements with [11C]DASB: A review on acquisition and preprocessing across 21 PET centres

Martin Nørgaard, Melanie Ganz, Claus Svarer, Ling Feng, Masanori Ichise, Rupert Lanzenberger, Mark Lubberink, Ramin V. Parsey, Marios Politis, Eugenii A. Rabiner, Mark Slifstein, Vesna Sossi, Tetsuya Suhara, Peter S. Talbot, Federico Turkheimer, Stephen C. Strother, Gitte M. Knudsen*

*Corresponding author for this work
14 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Positron Emission Tomography (PET) imaging has become a prominent tool to capture the spatiotemporal distribution of neurotransmitters and receptors in the brain. The outcome of a PET study can, however, potentially be obscured by suboptimal and/or inconsistent choices made in complex processing pipelines required to reach a quantitative estimate of radioligand binding. Variations in subject selection, experimental design, data acquisition, preprocessing, and statistical analysis may lead to different outcomes and neurobiological interpretations. We here review the approaches used in 105 original research articles published by 21 different PET centres, using the tracer [11C]DASB for quantification of cerebral serotonin transporter binding, as an exemplary case. We highlight and quantify the impact of the remarkable variety of ways in which researchers are currently conducting their studies, while implicitly expecting generalizable results across research groups. Our review provides evidence that the foundation for a given choice of a preprocessing pipeline seems to be an overlooked aspect in modern PET neuroscience. Furthermore, we believe that a thorough testing of pipeline performance is necessary to produce reproducible research outcomes, avoiding biased results and allowing for better understanding of human brain function.

Original languageEnglish
JournalJournal of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism
Volume39
Issue number2
Pages (from-to)210-222
Number of pages13
ISSN0271-678X
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Feb 2019

Keywords

  • data sharing
  • kinetic modeling
  • Positron Emission Tomography
  • preprocessing
  • [C]DASB

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