Fig. 1

Study design and methodology. a Schematic illustration of the study design. TSPO μPET was performed at 1.9, 3.9, and 6.4 months of age and ¹⁸F-FDG μPET at 6.4 months. Morris water maze was conducted before the final μPET scan. After the final scans, randomly selected mouse brains were processed for immunohistochemistry (IHC) analyses. b Target regions used in the study projected on a mouse brain MRI atlas: bilateral cortical (CTX), bilateral hippocampal (HIP), cerebellar (CBL), and brainstem (BRST) VOIs. c The middle row shows the bilateral nucleus accumbens (NCL AC) pseudo reference regions projected on mouse brain MRI. Statistical parametric mapping (SPM) shows lacking differences for ¹⁸F-FDG and¹⁸F-GE-180 in NAC at 6.4 months of age in SUV-scaled images from P301S mice contrasted against WT mice. d Robustness of ¹⁸F-GE-180 TSPO μPET values in analysis groups (total of six groups of P301S and WT mice) for SUV calculation (white) and pseudo reference region scaling (black) expressed as mean %-CoV (± SD). Error bars indicate SD. BL, baseline; FU, follow-up; SUV, standardized uptake value; SUVR, standardized uptake value ratio; CoV, coefficient of variance