[Positron emission tomography: contribution to diagnosis of dementia and development of disease-modifying drugs].

Although there are already many reports about the usefulness of positron emission tomography with FDG (FDG-PET) in diagnosis of Alzheimer disease (AD) and scientific evidence has been established, further improvement in diagnostic ability is achieved by using statistical image analysis, such as SPM and 3D-SSP. FDG-PET is also expected to be able to predict conversion to AD in patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and establishment of the scientific evidence by prospective clinical trial is indispensable. Although clinical application of amyloid imaging may enable super-early and pre-clinical diagnoses of AD, many unsolved problems still remain. PET can play an important role in clinical trials for developing new therapeutic drugs for AD.