PET/CT: Clinical Considerations

Combined positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) scanners have recently become available commercially and are currently being evaluated at several sites. These new imaging systems are based on two mature technologies. PET is well established for quantitative imaging of the positron emitter distribution in the body. During the last 25 years, a variety of tracers have been developed, which are suitable to characterize non-invasively and in vivo a large variety of normal or pathological molecular processes (see Chap. 10) (Tewson and Krohn 1998; Varagnolo et al. 2000). Today, 2-[l8F]fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose ([l8F]FDG) is the dominant tracer for clinical routine applications (Ak et al. 2000; Pauwels et al. 2000; Stokkel et al. 2001; Valkema et al. 1996; van der Hiel et al. 2001; Gambhir et al. 2001; Reske and Kotzerke 2001).