Positron emission tomography in oncology

Positron Emission Tomography is a sophisticated molecular imaging technique, using a special scanner, that displays the functional status of tissues in the body at the cellular level (their metabolism). It is a diagnostic scan that provides the physician with information not available with traditional anatomic studies such as CT or MRI. PET can detect changes in cell function (disease) long before they are evident as physical (anatomic) changes seen on CT or MRI. In this way PET can add important information about many diseases allowing the physician to make a diagnosis often much earlier than with anatomic imaging techniques such as CT or MRI alone. In addition, in cases where an abnormality is noted on CT or MRI, PET can help differentiate benign changes from changes due to disease. PET scanning also typically images the entire body, unlike CT/MRI which is usually broken up into specific limited body section scans. All cells use glucose as an energy source but cancer cells use much more since they are growing much faster and out of control. This is the basis of imaging with F-18 FDG glucose, the radiotracer agent use in a PET oncology study. The abnormal, accelerated glucose used by cancer cells is detected by the PET scanner that processes the emissions from the F-18 FDG glucose by abnormally high levels of metabolism (tumor)