Analysis of 2-[Fluorine-18]-Fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose Uptake Kinetics in PET Studies of Pulmonary Inflammation

Dynamic positron emission tomography (PET) imaging of the lung using the radiotracer 2-[fluorine-18]-fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose (18F-FDG) is an emerging method to assess noninvasively the metabolic activity of pulmonary inflammatory cells. Nevertheless, because of the distinct functional and structural characteristics of inflamed lung tissue standard methods of 18F-FDG analysis can be substantially limited and there is no consensus about the best method for quantification of the 18F-FDG signal for acute or chronic inflammatory lung diseases. This article gives an overview on recent advances in quantitative analysis of 18F-FDG uptake kinetics in non-neoplastic inflamed lung tissue.