The past year has been a groundbreaking one for neurology. 

When I began my PhD research almost 40 years ago, nuclear medicine research was almost entirely focused on diagnosis. 

Advanced Accelerator Applications (AAA), a major molecular medicine company based in Bourg en Bresse, France, announced Mar. 4 that the firm had acquired 100 percent of shares of the privately held U.K.-based Imaging Equipment, a distributor of nuclear medicine technologies and radiopharmaceuticals across the U.K. and Ireland.

The question of appropriate use of advanced nuclear medicine procedures is more salient than it has ever been, with overall health cost under government scrutiny and imaging eyed in particular due to increasing procedure numbers. Some experts are pointing to non-medical news sites and other media as a culprit in patient demand for potentially inappropriate PET use, according to a study published Feb. 18 in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention.

There are two main questions that remain on the minds of those evaluating PET/MR for clinical practice: Is PET/CT just as good? If yes, isn’t PET/CT cheaper? These questions are answered with a resounding ‘sometimes,’ according to a review published Feb. 20 in the Journal of Nuclear Medicine.

Imaging small biomolecules in living cells and animals just took a huge leap over the conventional restrictions of fluorescence imaging. Scientists at Columbia University in New York City have developed a means of observing miniscule molecular materials using novel chemistry and physics.

Understanding tau behavior in Alzheimer’s disease could alter the course of diagnostics and therapy development. Research conducted in part by scientists at the Technische Universitat Munchen (TUM) has revealed an essential mechanism of tau deposition and neurodegenerative disease, the institution announced today.

Biomarkers built upon aptamers rather than peptides and antibodies offer multiple advantages for molecular imaging and several are currently under development, according to a review published Feb. 13 in the Journal of Nuclear Medicine.