Prostate cancer: PET with 18F-FDG, 18F- or 11C-acetate, and 18F- or 11C-choline

Prostate cancer is biologically and clinically a heterogeneous disease that makes imaging evaluation challenging. The role of imaging in prostate cancer should include diagnosis, localization, and characterization (indolent vs. lethal) of the primary tumor, determination of extracapsular spread, guidance and evaluation of local therapy in organ-confined disease, staging of locoregional lymph nodes, detection of locally recurrent and metastatic disease in biochemical relapse, planning of radiation treatment, prediction and assessment of tumor response to salvage and systemic therapy, monitoring of active surveillance and definition of a trigger for definitive therapy, and prognostication of time to hormone refractoriness in castrate disease and overall survival. To address these tasks effectively, imaging needs to be tailored to the specific phases of the disease in a patient-specific, risk-adjusted manner. In this article, I review the preclinical and clinical evidence on the potential and emerging role of PET with the 3 most commonly studied radiotracers in prostate cancer, namely 18F-FDG, 18F- or 11C-acetate, and 18F- or 11C-choline.