Usefulness of FDG-PET for the diagnosis of brain tumors

Although magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and X-ray computed tomography (CT) are the two imaging modalities used conventionally for the morphological OUN imaging, there are many cases for positron emission tomography (PET) diagnostic. Basal radiopharmaceutic used in PET is a 18F-2-Fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose (18FDG). Use of PET imaging provides in vivo biochemical and physiological data and therefore can provide unique functional information about tumors compared to histological or anatomic neuroradiological methods. PET can provide information regarding tumor grading, delineation of tumors margins, differentiation of recurrent brain tumors from necrosis (golden standard), guidance for stereotactic biopsy, response to therapy and prognosis. New value in brain tumor imaging is combining two essential and complementary imaging modalities PET and multisection CT to create one integrated unit that allows both functional and anatomic imaging in a single study. This allows PET-CT for more accurate tumor localization and variability assessment changes impressions and increases diagnostic confidence. The first PET-CT centre in Poland is localised in Cancer Centre in Bydgoszcz. Scanning is performed on a dedicated Biograph (PET-CT) LSO scanner (SIMENS, Germany), and cyclotron RDS-111 (CTI, USA), FDG production laboratory (NUCLEAR INTERFACE, Germany, COMECER, Italy) and FDG quality control (RAYTES, Germany) are radiopharmaceutical production unit.