PET beyond ~(18)F-FDG: second generation PET tracers in clinical oncology

摘要

However, despite the many advantages of ~(18)F-FDG PET, it is not an ideal imaging technique in clinical oncology because of its limitations, including; 1) the high physiological uptake in e.g., the brain, heart and bladder, which complicates the detection of tumour lesions in or near these organs; 2) the low or virtually absent uptake in slow growing tumours; and 3) the accumulating in inflammatory and infectious lesions, making differentiation between these entities difficult, resulting in a low specificity. This leaves room for the development of other PET tracers that are better suited in specific tumour types and/or for specific indications. An overview of these second generation PET tracers that have been developed in past decades and finding their way to clinical oncologic applications, is given in the current special issue of the Quarterly Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging.