Role of Fluorodeoxyglucose PET in Inflammatory Bowel Disease: A Review

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) requires a complex diagnostic workup. In contrast to endoscopy and cross-sectional imaging methods, scintigraphy enables a complete survey of the whole small and large bowel intestinal tract with a single noninvasive examination. For detection of IBD, 80% to 90% sensitivity and 92% to 100% specificity can be found for conventional scintigraphy. A new imaging method like fluorine-18 (F-18) fluorodeoxyglucose PET has been shown to be useful in tumor diagnostics. A major problem in PET is the limited anatomic information and nonspecific tracer uptake within the colon, however, which may lead to false-positive results. New imaging methods like combined PET/CT can help to solve the problem, because physiologic tracer uptake can be easily distinguished from pathologic lesions as a result of the anatomic detail provided by CT.