Two cases of pulmonary paragonimiasis on FDG-PET CT imaging

Positron emission tomography (PET) using 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) is useful in cancer diagnosis owing to its sensitivity to the differences in glucose metabolic rate between benign and malignant diseases, especially in the lung. One pitfall in PET imaging of lung disease, however, is the overlap in metabolic rate of inflammatory and neoplastic entities. Paragonimiasis is a food-borne parasitic disease that causes the pulmonary and pleural inflammation. We present two cases of pulmonary paragonimiasis that showed high uptake suggestive of tumor on FDG-PET CT images, both confirmed on histopathology by visualization of Paragonimus westermani eggs in the involved tissues.