Jad. Aston et al., A statistical method for the analysis of positron emission tomography neuroreceptor ligand data, NEUROIMAGE, 12(3), 2000, pp. 245-256
A method for voxel by voxel statistical inference of PET radioligand recept
or studies is presented. This method is aimed at detecting differences in r
adioligand binding between baseline and activation scans. It uses nonlinear
least squares theory to estimate the ligand-receptor model parameters and
utilizes the residuals to calculate their associated variance. The approach
both increases the degrees of freedom for statistical testing and produces
more accurate estimates of the standard deviation of the parameters. This
technique is applicable to any ligand with a validated compartmental model,
whether reversibly or irreversibly bound. The method was investigated and
compared with a simple voxel-wise t test. Both simulated and real PET data
for the dopamine D-1 receptor ligand [C-11]SCH 23390 were used to assess th
e method. The assumptions implicit in the residuals methods were validated.
The residuals method was found to be more sensitive than a simple t test,
while not producing false-positive results. In addition, we showed that thi
s method reliably differentiates changes in radioligand binding from the ef
fects of changes in cerebral blood how. (C) 2000 Academic Press.