RESTON, Va. -- The first procedure guideline for using positron emission tomography (PET) combined with computed tomography (CT) to image tumors in adults and children has been developed by SNM and will be published in the May issue of the Journal of Nuclear Medicine.

This landmark document, "Procedure Guideline for Tumor Imaging With 18F-FDG PET/CT 1.0," will assist molecular and nuclear imaging physicians and technologists "in recommending, performing, integrating and reporting the results of PET/CT imaging with the radiopharmaceutical 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose or FDG--all to the benefit of current and future patients," said SNM President Peter S. Conti, professor of radiology, clinical pharmacy and biomedical engineering at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. "PET/CT will lead to improvements in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer and other diseases by providing more useful physiological and biochemical information than is available today and advancing research into molecular imaging," added Conti, who as SNM president represents more than 16,000 physician, technologist and scientist members. "It is critical for health care professionals to follow standardized PET/CT guidelines; it is key in providing consistent and quality patient care," said the director of the PET Imaging Science Center at USC's Keck School of Medicine.

"This 11-page document is an educational tool, identifying those elements that are most important in obtaining high-quality PET/CT images and interpretation," explained Dominique Delbeke, lead author of the article and the director of nuclear medicine and the PET Center at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn. This guideline, approved by the society's board of directors Feb. 11 at its Mid-Winter Educational Symposium in Tempe, Ariz., covers patient preparation, image acquisition, interpretation criteria and quality control. "The article stresses the importance of establishing qualifications for physicians, technologists and medical physicists," added Delbeke.

PET and CT are standard imaging tools that can be used to pinpoint the location of cancer within the body. The highly sensitive PET detects the metabolic signal of actively growing cancer cells. When PET is used to image cancer, a radiopharmaceutical (such as FDG, which includes both a sugar and a radionuclide) is injected into a patient. Cancer cells metabolize sugar at higher rates than normal cells, and the radiopharmaceutical is thus drawn in higher concentrations to cancerous areas. A PET scan shows where the radiopharmaceutical is by tracking signals given off by the drug. CT is an X-ray procedure that generates a detailed view of internal anatomy. When these two results are fused together, they can reveal the size, shape and location of cancer cells with a high level of accuracy.

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