[PET and SPECT investigations in Alzheimer's disease]

Nuclear medicine offers a wide range of possibilities to investigate dementia. Various SPECT and PET tracers will be introduced in this article first. Different questions concerning evaluation of dementia are discussed taking Alzheimer's disease (AD) as an example. It is important to perform nuclear medicine investigations on high technical level, using standardized methods as statistical parametric mapping (SPM) for evaluation. If neuroprotective therapies are available, an early diagnosis, the determination of risk factors and longitudinal investigations will be the focus of interest and the main goal of nuclear medicine. Apart from measuring cerebral perfusion and glucose metabolism the development of new ligands, concerning the cholinergic system and the visualization of amyloid plaques, is of great importance.