title: Clinical PET/CT imaging: promises and misconceptions.
abstract: PET/CT is now established as the most important imaging tool in oncology. PET/CT stages and restages cancer with a higher accuracy than PET or CT alone. The sometimes irrational approach to combine state of the art PET with the highest end CT devices should give way to a more reasonable equipment design tailored towards the specific clinical indications in well-defined patient populations. The continuing success of molecular PET/CT now depends more upon advances in molecular imaging with the introduction of targeted imaging probes for individualized therapy approaches in cancer patients and less upon technological advances of imaging equipment.
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology, Ahmanson Biological Imaging Center/Nuclear Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles 90095-6948, USA. jczernin@mednet.ucla.edu
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Czernin
authors.forename: M A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Auerbach
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D009367:Neoplasm Staging; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000473:pathology; D049268:Positron-Emission Tomography / Q000592:standards* / Q000639:trends; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012984:Software; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed / Q000592:standards* / Q000639:trends