Human brain mapping
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Human brain mapping · May 2014
Cerebral glucose metabolism on positron emission tomography of children.
Establishing the normative range of age-dependent fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) uptake in the developing brain is necessary for understanding regional quantitative analysis of positron emission tomography (PET) brain images in children and also to provide functional information on brain development. We analyzed head sections of FDG PET/computed tomography (CT) images for 115 patients (5 months to 23 years) without central nervous system disease before treatment, as PET studies are not performed on healthy children owing to ethical considerations and the risk of radiation exposure. We investigated the changes in FDG uptake and established age-associated normative ranges of cerebral FDG. ⋯ Linear and quadratic developmental trajectories were observed on absolute and relative SUVs, respectively. An increase from posterior-to-anterior and superior-to-inferior pattern was observed in both absolute SUV increase rate and relative SUV peak age. The SUV of each structure was modeled with respect to age, and these models can serve as baselines for the quantitative analysis of cerebral FDG-PET images of children.