NUCLEAR MEDICINE AND ONCOLOGY 

The Quarterly Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging 2004 June;48(2):66-75

Copyright © 2009 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

lingua: Inglese

PET/CT in diagnostic oncology

Messa C., Bettinardi V., Picchio M., Pelosi E., Landoni C., Gianolli L., Gilardi M. C., Fazio F.

IBFM-CNR, University of Milano Bicocca Scientific Institute H San Raffaele, Milan, Italy

In the ­last ­years positron emission tomography (PET) ­with 18F-flu­o­rod­e­ox­y­glu­cose ([18F]FDG) has bec­o­me an estab­lished tech­nique for the stag­ing and fol­low-up of a ­wide varie­ty of neo­plasms. As PET imag­ing is ­based on the phys­io­log­i­cal medi­at­ed dis­tri­bu­tion of the admin­is­tered trac­er, rath­er ­than on ana­tom­ic and struc­tu­ral char­ac­ter­is­tics of tis­sue, the addi­tion of CT imag­ing to PET improves the inter­pre­ta­tion of PET imag­es. Recently, ­integrated PET/CT scan­ners­ ­have ­been devel­oped ­that can ­pro­du­ce­c direct­ly func­tion­al PET and ana­tom­i­cal CT ­data 1 ses­sion, with­out mov­ing the ­patient and ­with min­i­mal ­delay ­between the recon­struc­tion and ­fusion of the 2 ­image ­data ­sets. In addi­tion, CT imag­es are ­also ­being ­used for atten­u­a­tion cor­rec­tion in the recon­struc­tion pro­cess of the PET emis­sion ­data. A ­brief ­review of the ­most rel­e­vant tech­ni­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics of ­3 PET/CT ­systems, ­which rep­re­sent the ­state of the art of ­this tech­nol­o­gy, are ­described. Furthermore an over­view of PET/CT acqui­si­tion pro­to­cols and clin­i­cal appli­ca­tions of PET/CT in oncol­o­gy are ­described. Overall, advan­tag­es of PET/CT ­over PET ­that may influ­ence the clin­i­cal rou­tine, ­have ­been iden­ti­fied as a) the short­er ­image acqui­si­tion ­time ­with ben­e­fit on ­patients through­put and on ­patient com­pli­ance, b) the bet­ter accu­ra­cy in ana­tom­i­cal­ly local­iz­ing ­focal are­as of abnor­mal trac­er ­uptake and defin­ing ­tumor ­extent and c) the pos­sibil­ity to ­stage a dis­ease in 1 sin­gle ­step.