llllI III I illl IIIIII II IIIIIII A Method for Comparing Different Procedures of Estimating Regional Glucose Metabolism Using

The purpose of this paper is to describe a method for deter-mining whether a particular procedure for estimating regional metabolism using the deoxyglucose tracer analogue yields better data than another in terms of subsequent statistical analysis. The method is based on a simple model of regional cerebral glucose metabolism with three potential sources of metabolic variability, namely individual differences in cerebral metabolic rate, consistent regional differences and error. When the literature rate constants were compared to a dy-namic procedure for estimating regional rate constants in patients with Huntington's Disease, the literature values were clearly superior in that the error component was approxi-mately half (18.5 versus 39.3%). Although these results can-not be generalized to all procedures for estimating regional glucose metabolism, the method can be applied to determin