The value of Brain SPECT functional Imaging in Clinical Psychiatry

Dan G Pavel M.D. Director, PathFinder Brain SPECT Imaging, Deerfield IL 60015.

Functional Brain SPECT perfusion studies provide important information in the evaluation of many psychiatric conditions with comorbidity. Indeed, the presence of comorbidity is a frequent reason for failed treatments. The comorbidity can be induced by a variety of origins including neurodevelopmental problems, traumatic brain injury, neuroinflammation, non-convulsive epilepsy, neurotoxic exposure, nutritional deficiencies, etc, which all contribute to the altering of blood flow levels in various gray matter structures.

A good quality brain SPECT provides detailed information about location, magnitude, and extent of areas of hyper and/or hypoperfusion(s). Such information will, in turn, contribute to the tailoring of a treatment strategy for a specific patient. In other words, brain SPECT (properly done and interpreted) goes a long way towards avoiding the dreaded “trial-and-error” pathway of treatment, by helping the specialist treat the patient and not the symptom.

The following PDF provides some examples of the usefulness of Brain SPECT functional imaging in clinical Psychiatry practice . It also shows how important functional details, can be easily visualized when using an optimized sequence of displays. In other words the effectiveness of a brain SPECT imaging procedure is greatly enhanced when the image results are presented in a consistent and relevant format.

For viewing the PDF click here

This video corresponds to the same case as shown, on the PDF above, under displays #14 to 14-5