Florbetaben for PET Imaging of Beta-Amyloid Plaques in the Brain

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a devastating neurodegenerative disorder affecting the elderly. Current clinical diagnostic tools are often ineffective in accurately diagnosing AD. However, new advances in diagnostic imaging, particularly positron emission tomography (PET) amyloid imaging, have shown increased sensitivity and specificity, as well as high inter-reader agreement. The most commonly studied tracer, PiB-C11, has shown high affinity binding to amyloid, but is limited in its use outside of research due to its short half-life. Instead, development of other PET ligands with increased half-life, such as fluorine-18-labeled ((18)F) tracers, allows for more widespread use of PET in clinical settings. In particular, recent phase II and III trials of (18)F-florbetaben have demonstrated the high accuracy of this PET tracer in identifying amyloid accumulation. This paper will examine the techniques of amyloid imaging, focusing particularly on the recently approved (18)F-florbetaben.