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Perfusion SPECT: Its Role in the Diagnosis and Differential Diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease, with Particular Emphasis on Guidelines

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Abstract

Dementia is a clinical diagnosis reflecting many possible underlying pathologies, including, for example, vascular dementia and neurodegenerative disorders such as frontotemporal dementia, Lewy body-type disorder or Alzheimer’s disease (AD). The breakthrough of 99mtechnetium-labelled perfusion tracers in the 1990s resulted in many SPECT studies of flow changes in AD. In the first decade of 2000, the role of perfusion SPECT was shifted from diagnosis towards differential diagnosis, parallel to the growing attention for diagnosing early stages of dementia. This evolution is reflected in the upcoming guidelines, which are detailed in this chapter.

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Correspondence to Ronald W. J. van Rheenen .

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van Rheenen, R.W.J., van Amerongen, J.P., Otte, A., De Deyn, P.P., Dierckx, R.A.J.O. (2014). Perfusion SPECT: Its Role in the Diagnosis and Differential Diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease, with Particular Emphasis on Guidelines. In: Dierckx, R., Otte, A., de Vries, E., van Waarde, A., Leenders, K. (eds) PET and SPECT in Neurology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-54307-4_14

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