F-18 FDG-PET and PET/CT Imaging of Cancer Patients

¹⁸F-FDG PET imaging diagnoses, stages, and restages many cancers with accuracies ranging form 80% to 90%. Because of the high accuracy of FDG-PET as a molecular imaging technique of disease biology, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved PET-FDG for all cancers. Fusion of both PET and CT images enhances the inherent clinical potential of both techniques and provides synergistic knowledge that is greater than the sum of information provided by each modality alone. Since the concept of PET/CT imaging only 6 years ago, state-of-the-art CT imaging technology has been combined with high-end PET systems. Acceptance and clinical use of these hybrid systems have been widespread. This nonsystematic review describes basic aspects of FDG-PET and PET/CT in cancer imaging, patient preparation and factors affecting imaging protocol.