What can be and what cannot be accomplished with PET to detect and characterize atherosclerotic plaques

Excerpt

The introduction of FDG as a radiotracer for imaging brain function in normal and disease states has led to the survival of PET as a viable and thriving imaging modality over the past 4 decades.1,2 Furthermore, a great deal of effort has been made to expand the domain of this extraordinary technology by utilizing an array of radiotracers intended to assess many malignant and benign disorders.3 As such, new tracers have been introduced primarily by relying upon the in vitro and pre-clinical animal data without realizing their relevance or feasibility in the in vivo settings. These attempts have been made without realizing the limitations of this technology in addressing the requirements to meet the many challenges that we face for conducting in vivo imaging studies. Over the years, the adoption of some unjustified concepts has resulted in performing a large number of human studies, and consequently, unfounded claims have been made about the role of certain PET tracers for both research and clinical purposes. Therefore, it is quite timely to clarify these misconceptions and define what can and cannot be accomplished with PET imaging, temper unrealistic expectations in the future, and utilize the limited available resources more effectively for research and clinical indications. …