Pilot comparison of F-fluorocholine and F-fluorodeoxyglucose PET/CT with conventional imaging in prostate cancer

Conventional imaging (CI) is known to have limitations with respect to staging of patients with primary or relapsed prostate cancer. Positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) with (18)F-flurodeoxyglucose (FDG) is also often suboptimal because of low tracer avidity, but (18)F-fluorocholine (FCH) appears to be a promising alternative molecular imaging probe. We report a prospective pilot study of PET/CT comparing both tracers for staging and restaging of patients with prostate cancer.

Sixteen prostate cancer patients were evaluated (7 for staging and 9 for restaging). All patients also underwent CI, comprising at least an abdominopelvic CT and a bone scan. All imaging results and other relevant data were extracted from the imaging reports and medical charts.

Based on all imaging-detected disease sites, both FCH-PET/CT and FDG-PET/CT (79%) were more sensitive than CI (14%), with the highest number of sites of nodal and distant disease on FCH PET/CT. FCH-PET/CT alone would have provided sufficient clinical information to form an appropriate management plan in 88% of cases, as compared with 56% for CI.

FCH-PET/CT has the potential to impact on the management of patients with prostate cancer significantly more often than CI.