PET-only 18F-AV1451 tau quantification

In vivo tau imaging with PET is a promising new modality that offers a unique insight into Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathology. 18F-AV1451 is a tau tracer currently being evaluated in both AIBL and ADNI. While MR-based quantification remains the gold standard, there is great interest in PET-only quantification techniques for use in patients who cannot undergo MRI. In this study, 3 PET-only methods (single atlas, adaptive atlas, and PCA-based atlas) are evaluated and compared to an MR-based quantification in both AIBL (94 subjects) and ADNI (87 subjects). Results show that all quantifications performed using PET-only normalization approaches did equally well, with an average quantification error around 2% in both cohorts.