title: Artifactual spinal metastases imaged by PET/CT: a case report.
abstract: A 55-y-old patient with multiple myeloma presented for restaging after chemotherapy and radiation. The patient had undergone vertebroplasty of multiple thoracic vertebrae because of painful compression fractures. The 18F-FDG PET images showed increased activity at the T8 and T10-T12 vertebral bodies. Comparison of the attenuation-corrected and non-attenuation-corrected images demonstrated that the activity was due to an artifact of attenuation correction. The CT scan correlated the sites of vertebroplasty to the 4 foci of increased uptake of 18F-FDG. The increasing use of vertebroplasty for malignant spinal fractures warrants vigilance for this artifact.
authors.affiliation: Department of Diagnostic Radiology, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut 06520-8042, USA. phillip.kuo@yale.edu
authors.forename: Phillip H
authors.initials: PH
authors.lastname: Kuo
authors.forename: David W
authors.initials: DW
authors.lastname: Cheng
mesh_terms: D016477:Artifacts; D005189:False Positive Reactions; D006801:Humans; D009101:Multiple Myeloma / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000556:secondary*; D009364:Neoplasm Recurrence, Local / Q000175:diagnosis; D049268:Positron-Emission Tomography / Q000379:methods; D013125:Spinal Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis*; D013904:Thoracic Vertebrae / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000601:surgery; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed / Q000379:methods