Maximising the benefit of integrated PET/CT: the road ahead

Excerpt

The article by Reinartz et al. raises interesting and important issues regarding PET-CT by comparing PET and separately acquired CT. The major conclusions of the authors are twofold. First, they conclude that only a relatively small number of patients would potentially benefit from PET-CT, given that the classification of a lesion remains equivocal in only a small number of patients when PET and CT are carefully evaluated side-by-side. Second, they report that in almost half their patients, proper interpretation of a PET scan requires the availability of a recent CT scan for comparison. This fraction increases to two-thirds if only those PET scans that show disease are taken into account. This article is eye-opening with regard not only to the actual findings but also to the bias induced by the vantage point from which the data are considered. PET-CT is a combined modality system. The authors view PET-CT from a nuclear medicine perspective, but it may also be illustrative to consider PET-CT from a radiologist’s or, better still, a future integrated modality imager’s perspective. …