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0:04
Moving on from SPECT/CT to PET/CT.
It is fair to say that 10 years into the introduction of PET/CT,
PET/CT has become a routine application primarily in oncology exams.
It goes without saying that for neurology exams,
MRI still remains the anatomical imaging modality of choice,
providing superior soft tissue contrast over CT.
But for extra cerebral oncology applications,
PET/CT has become a major choice of
diagnostic instrument for a variety of cancers as shown here on this slide.
0:42
Routine applications certainly entail oncology,
which accounts for about 95 percent of all PET/CT exams performed today.
What you see here is an early prototype study from 1999 showing a head and
neck cancer patient prior to and after excessive and intensive surgical intervention,
illustrating the change in anatomy in this particular case of therapy.
This is also very nice teaching case illustrating
the importance and the benefit of truly combined hardware imaging.
Because fusing PET and CT images in these situations of
highly altered anatomy of the patient would be very difficult to do retrospectively.
Lately, PET/CT has also been used for specific tracer imaging such as iodine 124.
These type of tracers that are very much wanted by physicians because of
their increased specificity have less or fewer anatomical background information and,
for example, FDG images.
These images would be almost impossible to be
co-registered with anatomical background information
unless fiducial markers are being used.
Which again, would be an additional logistical workload
compared to just performing a routine dual modality exam.
It can be hypothesized that PET/CT will excel
the introduction and adoption of highly specific tracers,
providing less anatomical background information then FDG.
Again, in both cases, like in PET/CT,
the use of CT based attenuation correction has supported the introduction
of PET/CT because it led to a reduction in
the overall examination time which would be beneficial to the patient.
