Related Experiment Video
Updated: Mar 10, 2026
Full- versus Sub-Regional Quantification of Amyloid-Beta Load on Mouse Brain Sections
Published on: May 19, 2022
Regional correlations between [11C]PIB PET and post-mortem burden of amyloid-beta pathology in a diverse
Sang Won Seo1, Nagehan Ayakta2, Lea T Grinberg3
1Memory and Aging Center, Department of Neurology, University of California, San Francisco, USA; Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley, USA; Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA; Departments of Neurology, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Republic of Korea.
Abstract:
Imaging-pathological correlation studies show that in vivo amyloid-β (Aβ) positron emission tomography (PET) strongly predicts the presence of significant Aβ pathology at autopsy. We sought to determine whether regional PiB-PET uptake would improve sensitivity for amyloid detection in comparison with global measures (experiment 1), and to estimate the relative contributions of different Aβ aggregates to in vivo PET signal (experiment 2). In experiment 1, 54 subjects with [11C] PiB-PET during life and postmortem neuropathologic examination (85.2% with dementia, interval from PET to autopsy 3.1 ± 1.9 years) were included. We assessed Thal amyloid phase (N = 36) and CERAD score (N = 54) versus both global and regional PiB SUVRs. In experiment 2 (N = 42), PiB SUVR and post-mortem amyloid β burden was analyzed in five customized regions of interest matching regions sampled at autopsy. We assessed the relative contribution of neuritic plaques (NPs), diffuse plaques (DPs) and cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA) to regional PIB SUVR using multi-linear regression. In experiment 1, there were no differences in Area Under the Curve for amyloid phase ≥ A2 and CERAD score ≥ C2 between global and highest regional PiB SUVR (p = 0.186 and 0.230). In experiment 2, when NPs, DPs, and/or CAA were included in the same model, moderate to severe NPs were independently correlated with PiB SUVR in all regions except for the inferior temporal and calcarine ROI (β = 0.414-0.804, p < 0.05), whereas DPs were independently correlated with PiB SUVR in the angular gyrus ROI (β = 0.446, p = 0.010). CAA was also associated with PiB SUVR in the inferior temporal and calcarine ROI (β = 0.222-0.355, p < 0.05). In conclusion, global PiB-PET SUVR performed as well as regional values for amyloid detection in our cohort. The substrate-specific binding of PiB might differ among the brain specific regions.
