Journal of nuclear medicine : official publication, Society of Nuclear Medicine
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In patients with locally advanced esophageal cancer, preoperative chemotherapy or chemoradiotherapy has been shown to improve outcome with respect to survival. Patients who respond to induction therapy have a significantly improved survival, compared with patients who do not respond to the therapy. However, surrogate markers that predict response or prognosis-especially early in the course of therapy-are not available in clinical routine. ⋯ From a methodologic point of view, the most important issue in therapy monitoring using (18)F-FDG PET and PET/CT is the standardization of patient preparation, data acquisition and processing, and data interpretation, especially for prospective randomized multicenter studies. In conclusion, single-center studies investigating response assessment in patients with esophageal cancer have provided promising results. In the future, prospective randomized multicenter trials will have to be performed and research will address new imaging probes and innovative therapy regimens.
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PET with (18)F-FDG is a standard staging procedure for most lymphoma subtypes. Performed during and after therapy for Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) and aggressive non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), (18)F-FDG PET results have a high prognostic value and correlate with survival. (18)F-FDG PET has been incorporated into revised response criteria for aggressive lymphomas, and several ongoing trials are under way to investigate the value of treatment adaptation based on early (18)F-FDG PET results for HL and aggressive NHL. ⋯ So that trial results can be compared and translated easily into clinical practice, uniform and evidence-based guidelines for the interpretation and reporting of response monitoring scans are warranted. Because it is still not proven that the use of interim (18)F-FDG PET can improve patient outcomes, we recommend examination of the use of (18)F-FDG PET for response monitoring in appropriately designed clinical trials.
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Successful treatment of pheochromocytoma requires accurate diagnosis and localization of tumors. Herein, we investigated the accuracy of PET using 3,4-dihydroxy-6-(18)F-fluoro-phenylalanine ((18)F-FDOPA), an amino acid transporter substrate, as an independent marker for detection of benign and malignant pheochromocytomas. ⋯ (18)F-FDOPA PET and PET/CT are highly sensitive and specific tools that can provide additional independent information for diagnosis and localization of benign and malignant pheochromocytomas.
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Attenuation correction (AC) of whole-body PET data in combined PET/MRI tomographs is expected to be a technical challenge. In this study, a potential solution based on a segmented attenuation map is proposed and evaluated in clinical PET/CT cases. ⋯ A segmented attenuation map with 4 classes derived from CT data had only a small effect on the SUVs of (18)F-FDG-avid lesions and did not change the interpretation for any patient. This approach appears to be practical and valid for MRI-based AC.