title: Initial prostate cancer diagnosis and disease staging--the role of choline-PET-CT.
abstract: An early and correct diagnosis together with accurate staging of prostate cancer is necessary in order to plan the most appropriate treatment strategy. Morphological imaging modalities such as transrectal ultrasonography (TRUS), CT, and MRI can have some limitations regarding their accuracy for primary diagnosis and staging of prostate cancer; for instance, they have limited specificity in differentiating cancer from benign prostatic conditions and, by using size as the only criterion to characterize lymph node metastases, they might not be accurate enough for tumour characterization. In this scenario, PET-CT with (11)C-labelled or (18)F-labelled choline derivatives provides morphological and functional characterization and could overcome the limitations of the conventional imaging techniques. PET-CT is one of the most investigated molecular imaging modalities for prostate cancer diagnosis and staging. Currently, the main investigations on the role of PET-CT in the diagnosis and staging of prostate cancer have been performed on a retrospective basis and this type of analysis might be one of the main reasons why different results regarding its diagnostic accuracy have been reported.
authors.affiliation: Nuclear Medicine Unit, IRCCS San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Via Olgettina 60, 20132 Milan, Italy.
authors.forename: Paola
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Mapelli
authors.affiliation: Nuclear Medicine Unit, IRCCS San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Via Olgettina 60, 20132 Milan, Italy.
authors.forename: Maria
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Picchio
mesh_terms: D002794:Choline; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D064847:Multimodal Imaging; D009367:Neoplasm Staging; D049268:Positron-Emission Tomography; D011471:Prostatic Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis*; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed
chemical_list: D002794:Choline