Imaging and PET - PET/CTimaging

PET-CT has grown because the lack of anatomiclandmarks in PET makes “hardware-fusion” to anatomiccross-sectional data extremely useful. Addition of CT to PET improvesspecificity, but also sensitivity, and adding PET to CT adds sensitivityand specificity in tumor imaging. The synergistic advantage of addingCT is that the attenuation correction needed for PET data can alsobe derived from the CT data. This makes PET-CT 25-30% fasterthan PET alone, leading to higher patient throughput and a morecomfortable examination for patients typically lasting 20 minutesor less. FDG-PET-CT appears to provide relevant information in thestaging and therapy monitoring of many tumors, such as lung carcinoma,colorectal cancer, lymphoma, gynaecological cancers, melanoma andmany others, with the notable exception of prostatic cancer. Forthis cancer, choline derivatives may possibly become useful radiopharmaceuticals.The published literature on the applications of FDG-PET-CT in oncologyis still limited but several well designed studies have demonstratedthe benefits of PET-CT.