Improvements in cancer staging with PET/CT: literature-based evidence as of September 2006

PET/CT with 18F-FDG is increasingly being used for staging, restaging, and treatment monitoring for cancer patients. CT is still frequently used only for attenuation correction and lesion localization. However, increasing sales of high-end scanners that combine PET with 64-detector CT strongly suggest that the field is moving toward a comprehensive concept, whereby diagnostic CT studies during intravenous contrast material application are combined with the highest-quality PET studies. At many institutions, in-line PET/CT has replaced separately acquired PET and CT examinations for many oncologic indications. This replacement has occurred despite the fact that only a relatively small number of well-designed prospective studies have verified imaging findings against the gold standard of histopathologic tissue evaluation. However, a large number of studies have used acceptable reference standards, such as pathology, imaging, and other clinical follow-up findings, for validating PET/CT findings. From these data, we believe, has emerged reliable evidence in support of the notion that PET/CT offers diagnostic advantages over its individual components for the major cancers.