While 18F-FDG PET is the gold standard for evaluating and managing patients with lung cancer, recent data have shown it also could be beneficial in diagnosing, staging and monitoring of small cell lung cancer.

This article discusses the recent updates in Alzheimer’s detection using amyloid PET radiotracer 18F-flutemetamol, proteins in the cerebrospinal fluid and blood.

Independent nuclear laboratories are under a mandate to achieve accreditation by Jan. 1, 2012, to continue receiving Medicare reimbursement. While maneuvering the varied accreditation processes requires practice management savvy—causing some practices to prolong the process—the impending deadline is approaching fast.

Using both PET and SPECT may have the potential to provide clinically useful data to enable better stratification and favorable treatments for heart failure patients.

Accurate localization of sentinel nodes with SPECT/CT has expanded beyond breast cancer and melanoma to head and neck cancer.

SPECT and PET-based strategies have started to refine diagnosis and treatment planning for Parkinson’s disease and epilepsy.

Imaging blood perfusion in pig livers; A molecular theranostics primer; Mice provide a biomarker roadmap for human approach; Simultaneous PET/3D FOT is feasible

The 16th annual scientific session of the American Society of Nuclear Cardiology (ASNC), Sept. 8-11, brings together scientists, clinicians and industry to establish and discuss optimal standards of imaging care.

A new day is dawning for breast cancer diagnosis, treatment and monitoring with the help of molecular imaging.

Radiation was brought to the fore within pediatric nuclear medicine following the release of a 2008 study which revealed a chaotic disarray of administered doses within North America’s premier pediatric institutions, including radiopharmaceutical doses varying by factors of as much as 10 in most children and by up to 20 in infants (J Nucl Med 2008; 49:1024–1027).

Last year, the SNM received a $48,000 grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to develop comparative-effectiveness research (CER) of PET and other molecular imaging techniques. The primary emphasis is on the diagnosis and management of cancer patients, but both cardiology and neurology questions are being addressed. Far beyond the dollars, too, is a significant increase in intellectual capital being expended across the globe on the role of CER in molecular imaging.

Researchers at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, along with collaborators at Cornell University and Hybrid Silica Technologies, have received approval for their first Investigational New Drug Application (IND) from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for an ultrasmall inorganic (silica) nanoparticle platform for tumor targeting and for the treatment of cancers in the future.

PET imaging is effective in staging, restaging, detecting recurrence and treatment monitoring across a wide range of cancers. This feature discusses updates on important PET imaging clinical trials in cancer care by the American College of Radiology Imaging Network and National Cancer Institute and focuses on improving cancer staging and predicting response to therapy. The National Oncology PET Registry (NOPR) recently published the results of the impact of dedicated brain PET on intended patient management and opened a registry for 18F-sodium fluoride PET to identify bone metastasis. The Cancer and Leukemia Group B (CALGB) sponsored by the NCI is another group conducting clinical trials in cancer, yet PET trials are still few.

FDG-PET is highly accurate in diagnosing progressive neurodegenerative disease such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD) even if cognitive dysfunction is only mild. Thus, novel brain imaging probes targeting, for instance, beta-amyloid will likely serve a different purpose. They will play an important role if beta-amyloid is confirmed as a molecular target of effective therapy, and drugs that target beta-amyloid are actually developed.

Due to the commonality of these arrhythmias and the number of procedures necessary to treat them, there is a growing need for the field of electrophysiology (EP). And to better treat patients with dangerous arrhythmias, practitioners have begun using cardiac PET and SPECT to help in patient selection and to guide EP procedures including ablations, lead placements and CRT implantations.

One of the most promising radiopharmaceuticals is the proliferation marker 3'-deoxy-3'-[18F] fluorothymidine (18F-FLT). Here we discuss examples that could begin to move into clinics over the next two years or more to better predict early response to treatment in ovarian cancer and gliomas, evaluate bone marrow transplant and visualize stem cells in the brain.