Indications

Increasingly, PET CT is used in the assessment of malignant and non-cancerous conditions.

It is used in the staging of most malignancies with radionuclide-labelled fluorodeoxyglucose the commonest agent, but more specific radiopharmaceuticals are available to assess specific malignancies like prostate cancer and neuroendocrine tumours.

Furthermore, as well as assessing the primary tumour, PET CT is useful to determine the extent of spread (metastases), local disease recurrence and to monitor response to chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

PET CT is more and more being utilised as an imaging tool for inflammatory and other non-malignant pathologies.  These include:

• Neurological conditions such as Parkinson’s Disease, Epilepsy, Huntingdon’s Chorea and Alzheimer’s Disease
• Coronary Artery Disease and specifically blood flow (perfusion) to heart muscle and areas of damage to determine if therapeutic intervention such as angioplasty & stenting will be effective
• Inflammatory changes within blood vessels (vasculitis) and conditions such as sarcoidosis
• Amyloidosis
• Pyrexia of Unknown Origin (PUO) where the source of sepsis is unclear