title: Choline PET/CT for prostate cancer: main clinical applications.
abstract: Several studies investigated the potential roles of imaging modalities in prostate cancer patients for the evaluation of intra-prostatic disease, stage and restage. However no precise guidelines exist about the use of imaging modalities, in particular about the role of PET/CT hybrid imaging. Considering the results of the literature and our experience, we tried to summarize the main applications of choline positron emission tomography (PET) in prostate cancer patients. The use of choline PET/CT for initial diagnosis and staging is not recommended as a first-line method. Instead the main and important application of choline PET/CT is represented by the restaging of the disease in case of biochemical relapse for the detection of lymph node and distant recurrence. In particular choline PET/CT could play a crucial role as first diagnostic procedure in prostate cancer patients who show a fast growing Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) kinetics.
authors.affiliation: Department of Nuclear Medicine, Azienda Ospedaliero-Universitaria di Bologna, Policlinico Sant'Orsola-Malpighi, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy.
authors.forename: Chiara
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Fuccio
authors.forename: Domenico
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Rubello
authors.forename: Paolo
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Castellucci
authors.forename: Maria Cristina
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Marzola
authors.forename: Stefano
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Fanti
mesh_terms: D002794:Choline; D006801:Humans; D007700:Kinetics; D008297:Male; D064847:Multimodal Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D009367:Neoplasm Staging; D049268:Positron-Emission Tomography; D011471:Prostatic Neoplasms / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed
chemical_list: D002794:Choline