The white elephant revived: A new marriage between PET and MRI Comment to Cumming: 'PET Neuroimaging: The White Elephant Packs His Trunk?'

摘要

In a recent NeuroImage article entitled "PET Neuroimaging: The White Elephant Packs His Trunk?", Paul Cumming provided an elegantly written account on the apparently diminishing importance of positron emission tomography (PET) as a neuroimaging modality in advancing knowledge of brain function (Cumming, 2014).Cumming makes the point that cost-benefit considerations are especially relevant to PET studies, as PET examinations of the brain are seen as relatively costly (Cumming, 2014). Furthermore, the radiochemistry and modelling expertise required for PET studies are technically and logistically challenging which partly explains the limited availability of PET compared to functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Due to the fact that PET involves radiation exposure, researchers also need to justify to the radiation regulation authorities and ethics committees why PET rather than any other non-ionising brain mapping modality is uniquely suited to answer the neuroscientific question at hand.