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Published on: August 2, 2022
Detectable size of melanoma metastases to brain on PET/CT
Jorge D Oldan1, Samuel A Glaubiger2, Amir H Khandani2
1UNC Department of Radiology, Chapel Hill Hospitals, 101 Manning Drive, Chapel Hill, NC, 27514, USA. Jorge_oldan@med.unc.edu.
Objective:
We aimed to determine at what size melanoma metastases become detectable by PET/CT.
Methods:
We reviewed a total of 293 whole-body PET/CT studies performed on 212 patients for staging of melanoma where there was an MRI within a month of the PET/CT. MR and PET/CT were reviewed independently by separate readers.
Results:
PET/CT revealed an overall incidental true-positive rate of 1% on a per-patient basis, consistent with other studies, with 'hot' lesions (more avid than brain parenchyma) visible at smaller sizes than 'cold' lesions.
Conclusions:
PET/CT can detect metastatic melanoma lesions over about 2 cm in size, with hot lesions generally visible at smaller sizes.
