Review on multiple PET/CT imaging agents in treatment response evaluation for esophageal cancer

Radiotherapy and chemotherapy are important methods in the treatment of esophageal cancer. The evaluation of response after treatment has considerable importance for individualized treatment. The conventional imaging technology used to evaluate the response after therapy is only based on morphological changes, which cannot accurately reflect the early changes in tumor size. By contrast, the molecular imaging technology, PET/CT, can use different types of imaging agents to evaluate treatment response in terms of metabolism, proliferation, hypoxia, and apoptosis, which improves the diagnosis' sensitivity and specificity. Therefore, molecular imaging using multiple PET tracers is a promising new method for the evaluation of therapy response in esophageal cancer. The article reviews the PET/CT imaging agents used to examine the non-operation treatment response of esophageal cancer in recent years. (authors)