Differential Diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease and

The aim of this study was to use brain SPECT to differentiate vascular parkinsonism (VP) from Parkinson’s disease. Methods: Fourteen VP patients (age range, 59–87 y; mean age, 70 6 7.5 y), 30 Parkinson’s disease patients (age range, 54–84 y; mean age, 65 6 8.8 y), and 26 healthy (control) individuals (age range, 50–85 y; mean age, 60 6 9 y) were examined. A 925-MBq (25 mCi) dose of 99mTc-TRODAT-1 was injected intrave-nously, and brain SPECT images were acquired 4 h after injection. The ratio of specific to nonspecific striatal 99mTc-TRODAT-1 binding was measured and compared. Results: Af-ter a region-of-interest analysis of the images from VP patients, Parkinson’s disease patients, and healthy volunteers was per-formed to obtain ratios of putamen to occipital and striatal to occipital binding as a measurement of specific binding to the dopamine transporters in these regions of the brain, wher