ABSTRACT

Nuclear medicine imaging methods are commonly used as high-sensitivity markers of disease and tools for clinical practice in the evaluation and diagnosis of movement disorders. In patients with movement disorders, nuclear medicine methods with higher priority are in vivo imaging of the dopaminergic system and evaluation of functional changes in the brain for early and differential diagnosis of specific diseases. Presynaptic dopaminergic imaging may be useful for the assessment of striatal dopamine reserve and differential diagnosis of neurodegenerative and non-neurodegenerative etiologies of parkinsonism. Functional brain imaging may contribute to differential diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases that cause parkinsonism by showing disease-specific pathologic findings. In this review, we aimed to summarize nuclear medicine methods that are routinely used for diagnostic evaluation of patients with movement disorders.