A revisit to quantitative PET with 18 F-FDOPA of high specific activity using a high-resolution condition in view of application to regenerative therapy

Objective With the advent of regenerative/cell therapy for Parkinson’s disease (PD), 18F-FDOPA has drawn new attention as a biomarker of the therapeutic that cannot be evaluated with radiopharmaceuticals for dopamine transporter. Since most previous 18F-FDOPA PET studies were carried out many years ago with a PET scanner of lower resolution and with 18F-FDOPA of low specific activity synthesized from 18F-F2, we used a newer PET/CT scanner with a high-resolution condition and 18F-FDOPA synthesized from 18F-F− to re-evaluate this technique on normal subjects and patients with PD, together with D2 receptor imaging with 11C-raclopride (RAC).