Table 1.

Characteristics of the covered imaging techniques to study hepatic transporter activity.

	PET	SPECT	DCE-MRI
Detection principle	Radioactive decay	Radioactive decay	Nuclear magnetic resonance
Employed nuclei	11C (20.4 min), 18F (109.8 min)	99mTc (6.1 h), 123I (13.3 h)	Gd
Spatial resolution	2 – 8 mm	7 – 10 mm	2 – 5 mm
Temporal resolution	Seconds – minutes	Minutes	Seconds – minutes
Detection sensitivity	10−11 – 10−12 mol/L	10−10 – 10−11 mol/L	10−4 – 10−5 mol/L
Quantification	Quantitative	(Semi)-quantitative	(Semi)-quantitative
Radiation exposure	Yes	Yes	No