Developments in oncological positron emission tomography/computed tomography assessment

Positron emission tomography (PET)/computed tomography (CT) using ¹⁸F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) has become a standard tool for staging and therapy monitoring in oncology. Qualitative assessment of tracer uptake has become the basis for important therapy decisions such as whether to continue or abandon radiotherapy after effective chemotherapy in advanced Hodgkin lymphoma (1,2). The tools for this PET interpretation have to be reproducible and standardized, to ensure adequate treatment for all patients (2,3). In contrast to some lymphatic malignancies, cure rates are generally lower in most advanced solid tumors. If responses to a specific treatment occur, they can easily be detected by quantitative analyses, which are more sensitive than visual criteria. Therefore, quantitative PET analyses have been introduced in solid tumor PET studies and several PET parameters have been proposed as a supplement to visual analyses to measure the patient’s response to a specific treatment (4).