The role of emission tomography in pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic studies in clinical psychopharmacology.

Position Emission Tomography (PET) and Single Photon Emission Tomography (SPECT) can be used for both pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic measures in vivo in man. As such they have a wide range of applications including description of neurochemical changes in disease, occupancy, brain effects of medicines and discovery and validation of biomarkers. The power of these tools is in their chemical specificity and sensitivity, and in the ability to describe processes in vivo, thus documenting the effects of genetic and environmental interactions. The future of these technologies is dependent on an investment in bringing out and validating new radiotracers.