Purpose of review: This review will focus on the coming proliferation of amyloid-beta imaging tracers and give an opinion on how the Alzheimer's disease field can develop a systematic means of evaluating which tracers are useful and how the useful tracers compare to each other.
Recent findings: Several new tracers have been reported to be useful for human amyloid-beta imaging. The most recent of these are labeled with fluorine-18. Compared with the 20 min half-life of carbon-11 used in the most widely used tracer, Pittsburgh Compound-B, the 110 min half-life of fluorine-18 allows for wider utilization in research and clinical settings.
Summary: It is likely that more than one fluorine-18-labeled tracer will come into common use. The use of preclinical and clinical 'bridging studies' to [C-11]Pittsburgh Compound-B could be a means to determine whether the sizable body of knowledge already gained in [C-11]Pittsburgh Compound-B studies can be applied to the understanding of these new tracers and to form a basis for the comparison among them. This approach could save resources and help sort out a potentially bewildering onslaught of new amyloid-beta imaging tracers.