Four decades of mapping and quantifying neuroreceptors at work in vivo by positron emission tomography

Decryption of brain images is the basis for the necessary translation of the findings from imaging to information required to meet the demands of clinical intervention. Tools of brain imaging, therefore, must satisfy the conditions dictated by the needs for interpretation in terms of diagnosis and prognosis. In addition, the applications must serve as fundamental research tools that enable the understanding of new therapeutic drugs, including compounds as diverse as antipsychotics, antidepressants, anxiolytics, and drugs serving the relief of symptoms from neurochemical disorders as unrelated as multiple sclerosis, stroke, and dementia. Here we review and explain the kinetics of methods that enable researchers to describe the brain’s work and functions. We focus on methods invented by neurokineticists and expanded upon by practitioners during decades of experimental work and on the methods that are particularly useful to predict possible future approaches to the treatment of neurochemical disorders. We provide an overall description of the basic elements of kinetics and the underlying quantification methods, as well as the mathematics of modeling the recorded brain dynamics embedded in the images we obtain in vivo. The complex presentation to follow is necessary to justify the contribution of modeling to the development of methods and to support the specifications dictated by the proposed use in clinical settings. The quantification and kinetic modeling processes are equally essential to image reconstruction and labeling of brain regions of structural or functional interest. The procedures presented here are essential tools of scientific approaches to all conventional and novel forms of brain imaging. The foundations of the kinetic and quantitative methods are keys to the satisfaction of clinicians that actively engage in treating the neurochemical disorders of mammalian brains in the fields of neurology, neurosurgery, and neuropsychiatry.