In vivo measurement of dopamine release with [18F]Fallypride in healthy humans during a reward task and optimization of task timing

Purpose: With the development of high affinity radioligands for dopamine (DA) D2/3 receptors such as the selective [F]Fallypride, it has been possible to measure changes in binding potential (BP) during pharmacological and non-pharmacological paradigms also in extrastriatal dopaminergic regions, where D2/3 receptor densities are considerably lower than in the striatum. We evaluated the ability of quantifying extrastriatal endogenous DA release in healthy humans using [F]Fallypride in a single scanning session during a reward task [1,2]. Moreover, with these data and simulation studies, we investigated the capacity of the used [F]Fallypride PET protocol to detect both extrastriatal and striatal DA release and optimized the design for future studies.