 TEP-CT |
Medical Departments
PET CT Scan (Nuclear Medicine)
Presentation
Introduction
Since June 2001, a centre for positron emission tomography has been put at the disposal of the Jules Bordet Institute.
The centre was founded within the framework of a cooperation with other public hospitals from Brussels – within the IRIS hospital network. It is one of the thirteen PET centre recognized by royal decree. A donation made by ‘The Friends of the Jules Bordet Institute’ greatly helped to buy the device.
After a starting phase, we soon became aware that the existing PET installation had to be expanded to a PET/CT installation in order to keep on working at the best level, clinically as well as scientifically. This was achieved in 2004 thanks to another donation of ‘The Friends’. The inauguration of the PET/CT centre took place in February 2005 and was enhanced – among other things – by the really appreciated presence of the minister of Health Rudy Demotte.
It marked the start of a flourishing period during which the PEC/CT developed towards a fundamental technique for oncological medical imaging. The best witness to it is the increasing number of PET examinations performed at the Jules Bordet Institute; actually, that number has almost doubled for the last two years (in 2005, about 2300 PET were performed).
However, the technique is still ‘unknown’ to the eyes of the general public and its difference with the conventional CT-scan is not clear. Therefore, this text aims at presenting – to the public at large – the technique’s principles and applications.
Principle of the metabolic imaging and of the PET/CT
The positron emission tomography is without a doubt the most innovative technique developed within the continually changing landscape of oncological imaging. Its introduction to oncology put nuclear medicine back in the foreground of cancerology.
The principle of the PET diagnosis is revolutionary. The classical cancer imaging as realized through radiological techniques (CT, magnetic resonance, ultrasound scan) is based on a modification of the anatomy, structure, morphology or density in comparison to normal tissues. Recent technological developments have extraordinarily improved the quality of conventional radiological imaging, especially thanks to the strong increase of their spatial resolution (less than 1mm) and of (the resolution of) 3-dimension images that call for imagination (e.g. virtual coloscopy).
Nevertheless, the PET technology approaches the disease from a completely different angle.
Indeed, the contrast of the images is no more determined by the structural differences of the tissues, but is based on the metabolic characteristics of the lesions.
The medical world soon became aware of the necessity of the anatomical information in order to have a reliable analysis of these metabolic images (see FIGURE 1); this led to the technological development of built-in machines, i.e. the PET/CT. In this case, it is about the combination of a PET module and a CT module in only one scanner, which allows the parallel assessment of both structural and metabolic characteristics of the tumours. To that purpose, we make a CT and PET examination of the whole body of the patient which takes about 30 minutes.
Of course, the fusion of both modules requires a connection between both specialized medical fields, i.e. radiology and nuclear medicine. Within the Jules Bordet Institute, this evolution was lived as a important enrichment by both departments, with the integration of the joint analysis of PET/CT images in the daily routine.
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• Some technical aspects of the PET: click here
• Why is the 18-fluorodeoxyglucose a unique tracer ? click here
• How can the PET technique improve the approach of the cancer patient ? click here
• What are the future prospects of the PET technique ? click here
Person in charge : Pr Patrick Flamen
Last reading of this page : January 2008
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