Advances in radio-imaging of neuroendocrine tumors

Neuroendocrine tumors are usually slow-growing tumors that are difficult to locate with standard diagnostic imaging procedures, including enhanced computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging. The observation that most neuroendocrine tumors have at their surface a high level of somatostatin receptors and the synthesis of octreotide (a long-lasting somatostatin analogue) has led to the development of a new radio-imaging procedure to detect these tumors. This procedure has been applied in numerous patients for the detection of neuroendocrine and other types of tumors. In this review, we summarize the results of the studies published recently in the literature.