PET STUDIES OF PATIENTS WITH PARTIAL EPILEPSY - VISUAL INTERPRETATIONVS SEMI-QUANTIFICATION QUANTIFICATION/

One of the advantages of PET is to allow for precise regional measurem ents of radioactive tracers in slices of brain. Furthermore, complex c ompartment modelling methods have been designed to transform the regio nal radioactive concentrations into biological units. The question is often raised whether quantification of PET studies is necessary in cli nical practice. In epileptology, the regional biochemical changes asso ciated with temporal lobe epilepsy are easily detected by experienced eyes and quantification is not required for diagnosis purposes. By con trast, inter-patient or inter-population comparisons can only be perfo rmed if regional measures have been obtained; if the PET method has be en previously validated, simple measurements (regional activity) are s ufficient and (kinetic) compartmental modelling is not necessary in ro utine.