Positron Emission Tomography Imaging in Clinical Trials for Parkinson's Disease: Applications of Metabolic Brain Network Approach.

Abstract

Neuroimaging with positron emission tomography (PET) has been instrumental in elucidating neurobiological mechanisms behind therapeutical trials in Parkinson's disease (PD). A variety of medical and neurosurgical interventions have been evaluated using many radioligands that reveal molecular basis for target engagement and brain responses in relation to clinical outcome measures. This review article describes major applications of metabolic brain network analysis in therapeutical studies in non-demented PD to restore functional abnormality by drug therapy, ablative lesioning, deep brain stimulation, gene therapy, and cell transplantation alongside placebo effects. The findings with brain network biomarkers using multivariate analysis are supported by regionally specific metabolic changes and clinical correlations detected by complementary univariate analysis. The review demonstrates a powerful methodology of combining multimodal neuroimaging data and network modeling approaches followed by some perspectives on future directions in this specialty area of translational research. Different neuroimaging biomarkers have been compared in light of recent advances in biofluid biomarkers. These efforts not only bring more precise understanding on mechanisms of action associated with different therapies, but also provide a road map for conducting successful clinical trials of emerging disease-modifying therapies in PD and related disorders. © 2025 International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society.