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Brain imaging

Applications of tau PET imaging

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Progress in the development of PET radiotracers has enabled the noninvasive assessment of the pathological hallmarks of Alzheimer disease (AD) and other neurodegenerative disorders. New reports have revealed the potential usefulness of tau PET imaging in AD and non-AD tauopathies.

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Figure 1: Tau PET images in patients with Alzheimer disease.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank R. Harada for substantial contributions to the discussion of content for this article. This study was supported by Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B) (15H04900) and Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas (Brain Protein Aging and Dementia Control) (26117003) from MEXT, Japan.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nobuyuki Okamura is at the Division of Pharmacology, Faculty of Medicine, Tohoku Medical and Pharmaceutical University, 4-4-1 Komatsushima, Aoba-ku, Sendai 981–8558, Japan.,

    Nobuyuki Okamura

  2. Kazuhijo Yanai is at the Department of Pharmacology, Tohoku University School of Medicine, 2-1 Seiryo-machi, Aoba-Ku, Sendai 980–8575, Japan.,

    Kazuhiko Yanai

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  1. Nobuyuki Okamura
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  2. Kazuhiko Yanai
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Correspondence to Kazuhiko Yanai.

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Competing interests

N.O. is a consultant for CLINO and has received royalties from GE Healthcare.

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Okamura, N., Yanai, K. Applications of tau PET imaging. Nat Rev Neurol 13, 197–198 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrneurol.2017.38

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