Prof. Dr. med. Alfred Buck

 

Main Goals, Keywords

Investigations into the coupling of cerebral metabolism and blood flow in animals and humans. Anterior and posterior limbic contribution to human memory and reality monitoring – functional imaging studies in humans (positron emission tomography, orbitofrontal cortex, cerebral metabolism, optical imaging, autoradiography).

Group Members

1 professor, 2 postdoctoral fellows

Previous and Current Research

Animal studies

Study of the vascular architecture of the corpus callosum of the rat. Methodology: Intravascular corrosion casts.

Investigation of brain metabolism using C-11 lactate and C-11 acetate. The purpose is to shed new light on neuronal and astrocytic metabolism. The tracer uptake in the brain is measured with a beta probe that we developed ourselves in collaboration with CSEM, Neuchatel.

Investigation of metabolism and blood flow in the rat cortex using the optical methods laser speckle imaging and flavoprotein autofluorescence imaging.

Evaluation of the uptake of multiple tracers in experimental brain tumors. The tracers evaluated were F-18 FDG, F-18 fluorocholine and F-18 ethyltyrosine.

Human studies

Study of the functions of the human orbitofrontal cortex. Methodology: H215O PET.

Investigation of cerebral astrocytic metabolism during visual stimulation, using PET and various tracers.

Illustration: Reconstructed trajectories of fiber bundles of the corticospinal pathway. The fiber bundles are reconstructed by a) FACT algorithm, b) standard FM algorithm and c) advanced FM algorithm (see ref. 3 below); they are overlaid on coronal views (top row) and sagital views (bottom row) and are color-coded (green = anterior– posterior, blue = foot– head, red = left– right) according to their spatial direction.

Future Projects

Further investigations of the basic mechanisms of cerebral metabolism and blood flow.

Techniques and Equipment

• Equipment to perform autoradiography in rats with a variety of tracers
• Intracortical beta probe to record the time-course of tracers (www.swisstrace.com)
• Laser Speckle Imaging and Flavoprotein Autofluorescence Imaging
• PET
• fMRI in humans and animals

Selected Publications

• Burger IA, Huser DM, Burger C, von Schulthess GK, Buck A. Repeatability of FDG quantification in tumor imaging: averaged SUVs are superior to SUVmax. Nucl Med Biol. 2012 Jul;39(5):666-70. Epub 2012 Mar 3.
  
• Haerle SK, Fischer DR, Schmid DT, Ahmad N, Huber GF, Buck A. 18F-FET PET/CT in advanced head and neck squamous cell carcinoma: an intra-individual comparison with 18F-FDG PET/CT. Mol Imaging Biol. 2011 Oct;13(5):1036-42.
• Burger IA, Burger C, Berthold T, Buck A. Simplified quantification of FDG metabolism in tumors using the autoradiographic method is less dependent on the acquisition time than SUV. Nucl Med Biol. 2011 Aug;38(6):835-41. Epub 2011 May 6.

Selected Lectures, Seminars, Colloquia

• Kernspin-Tomographie für die medizinische Diagnostik
• Kernspintomographie und lokale Magnetresonanz-Spektroskopie (Kolloquium)

Funding

Swiss National Science Foundation

URL

http://www.zkf.uzh.ch/ResearchGroups/AlphabeticOrder/Buck.html