[Use of PET and SPECT in psychiatry].

This review presents the basic essentials of the application of nuclear medicine technology in psychiatry, i.e., positron emission tomography (PET) and single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT). These include integral principles of physics and radiochemistry as well as of data acquisition and analysis. Significant findings from applications in research and the clinical setting (schizophrenic and affective disorders, substance abuse, dementia) illustrate the huge potential of these methods. They have helped to deepen the understanding of the neurobiology of those disorders and the mechanism of action of psychotropic drugs. Due to its unmatched sensitivity, molecular imaging with PET and SPECT represents an important complement to magnetic resonance imaging technology in research and clinical practice.