[18F FDG PET- applications in oncology]

The greatest branch of evolution in Nuclear Medicine that appear in the last period of time, also in medical practice, is scintigraphy with 18F FDG-PET. At the beginning, the images with 18F FDG were used especially in the study of functional cerebral metabolism. Now, new data show that the method presents en major role in cancer diagnosis, localize the tumour and metastasis, and monitoring the treatment in oncology because of the peculiars changes in glucose metabolism of the cancer cells. In this two parts of reference synthesis our goal was to present the following subjects: I) first part include the particularities of glucose metabolism of tumour cells, functionality and components of PET, radiopharmaceutical used in PET, the synthesis of 18F FDG, the clinical procedure and the detection of unknown cancers; II) the second part is about the mains types of tumours identified with 18F FDG-PET (lung, breast, lymphoma, melanoma, colorectal cancer and others). The clinical cases that illustrate the applications are investigated at CERMEP, Lyon, France.