Assessment of Tumor Response to Therapy in Lymphoma Using 18F-FDG PET: Diagnostic Performance of 18F-FDG PET and Interval Likelihood Ratio

In this paper, the authors intended to summarize briefly the features of lymphoma with regard to 18F-FDG PET for assessment of tumor response to therapy, to describe why assessment of treatment response should be performed, to review what method so far has been used in monitoring treatment response, to discuss what limitations of morphologic imaging criteria for assessing tumor response are, in compared with 18F-FDG PET, and to introduce recently proposed criteria for assessing tumor response in malignant lymphoma. And also the authors emphasize the need to understand the characteristics of diagnostic performance of 18F-FDG PET in several clinical settings in order to interpret 18F-FDG PET results appropriately, and to encourage the use of interval likelihood ratio to enhance clinical implications of test results which, in turns, allows referring physicians to understand the meaning of interpretation with easy. Until recently, treatment response has been assessed according to the morphologic criteria. Metabolic imaging with 18F-FDG PET was adopted to have important role for treatment assessment in IWC+PET criteria proposed recently by IHP. To accomplish this role, we should perform and interpret 18F-FDG PET according to IWC+PET criteria. It is important for referring physicians to understand the various limitations of 18F-FDG PET and pitfalls in PET interpretation, and to understand that clinical information are needed by nuclear medicine physicians to optimize the interpretation of 18F-FDG PET