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Brain scans (PET, MRI and the like) at the Center for Neurosciences (CFN) enable accurate diagnoses of neurodegenerative diseases. Here, a PET scan of a healthy patient’s brain (left) is compared with a PET scan of a patient with Huntington’s disease (right). Note the shrinking of the red and yellow regions in the Huntington’s patient.

This PET scan shows regions of reduced glucose metabolism (blue) in the brain of a patient with multiple system atrophy (MSA), a disease with Parkinson’s-like symptoms. It is difficult but essential to distinguish MSA from Parkinson’s, because the two require very different treatments.

The diagnostic specificity of PET imaging depends on a wide spectrum of radioactive tracers that can illuminate various biological regions or pathways. Those tracers, which decay rapidly after being created, are made on the premises by the cyclotron pictured here.

Scanners used by CFN investigators are located on site at The Feinstein Institute, on the same floor as the cyclotron. In the photograph, an image designed to test aspects of a patient’s cognitive functioning is displayed on an overhead monitor while a PET scanner records changes in the patient’s brain.

A brain scan of a patient with Parkinson’s disease shows where cerebral glucose metabolism is significantly below (blue) or above (red) the corresponding levels measured in the same parts of the brains of people without disease. CFN investigators have shown that such changes are reliable biomarkers of the disease.

CFN Administrative Director Christine Edwards examines a brain scan for the telltale pattern of Parkinson’s disease.