ABSTRACT
Introduction Nuclear medicine has a lengthy and distinguished reputation in the fields of
neurology and psychiatry as a powerful research and clinical tool. Noninvasive in vivo demonstration of brain lesions was initially performed more than forty years ago with agents which accumulated nonspecifically. Since then we have witnessed an important evolution in the techniques used for the diagnosis of neuropsychiatric disorders. The “traditional” brain scan, based on agents sensitive to blood-brain barrier (BBB) disruption (Fig. 1), has been replaced by anatomically superior approaches such as x-ray transmission computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for the study of most focal lesions.
