Future of Thoracic PET Scanning

The advances in PET scanning for thoracic diseases that are deemed most likely to have clinical impact in the near-term future are highlighted in this article. We predict that the current practice of medicine will continue to embrace the power of molecular imaging and specifically PET scanning. 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose-PET scanning will continue to evolve and will expand into imaging of inflammatory disorders. New clinically available PET scan radiotracers, such as PET scan versions of octreotide and amyloid imaging agents, will expand PET imaging into different disease processes. Major improvements in thoracic PET/CT imaging technology will become available, including fully digital silicone photomultipliers and Bayesian penalized likelihood image reconstruction. These will result in significant improvements in image quality, improving the evaluation of smaller lung nodules and metastases and allowing better prediction of prognosis. The birth of clinical PET/MRI scan will add new imaging opportunities, such as better PET imaging of pleural diseases currently obscured by complex patient motion.