Basic principles and neurosurgical applications of positron emission tomography

The importance clinical applications of PET in neurosurgery include localization of epileptic foci, diagnosis of brain tumors, preoperative brain mapping, and the study of plasticity of brain following brain damage: Conclusions are summarized as follows: PET can noninvasively localize the epileptogenic focus in patients with partial epilepsy and can detect the epileptogenicity that is undetectable by structural imaging methods, such as MR imaging and CT PET provides the ability to investigate the physiology of primary and metastatic intracranial tumors and to examine tumor physiological variables, such as glucose metabolism, blood flow, amino acid uptake, protein synthesis, and cell proliferation rate PET can provide highly precise maps of brain function. With lower risk, lower cost, and higher accuracy, PET offers an alternative to the invasive Wada test PET can be used to investigate plasticity of the brain in patients with brain damage.