PET/CT:
ACR (American College of Radiology) Accredited Facility

In July of 2000, Reno Diagnostic Centers introduced PET technology to Northern Nevada. By doing so, RDC added an important new dimension to a physician's ability to diagnose and manage cancer.

Unlike other imaging technologies that detect changes in the physical size or structure of internal organs, PET detects changes in cellular function. Since these functional changes may take place before physical changes occur, PET often provides an earlier diagnosis of diseases. If these diseases have already been detected by an imaging exam, such as CT or MRI study, PET can often characterize the cellular function early in the course of the disease.

These capabilities can, in turn, translate into faster initiation of the best treatment, often avoiding more invasive exams or exploratory surgery. A PET study can:

• Help diagnose a problem.
• Help your physician predict the likely outcome of various therapeutic alternatives.
• Help pinpoint the best approach for treatment.
• Monitor your progress so that if you're not responding as well as expected, you can be switched to a more effective therapy immediately.

Your physician will be able to tell you precisely what he/she hopes to learn from your PET exam. As far as risks are concerned, there are little or no risks. A PET study is similar to many other diagnostic procedures. The radiation is similar to receiving two x-rays.

How PET Works

The most common form of a PET scan begins with an injection of a glucose-based radiopharmaceutical (FDG), which travels through the body, eventually collecting in the organs and tissues targeted for examination. The patient lies flat on a bed/table that moves incrementally through the PET scanner. The scanner has cameras that detect the gamma rays emitted from the patient, and turns those into electrical signals, which are processed by a computer to generate the medical images. The bed/table moves a few inches again, and the process is repeated.

This produces the digital images, which are assembled by the computer into a 3-D image of the patient's body. If an area is cancerous, the signals will be stronger there than in surrounding tissue, since more of the radiopharmaceutical (FDG) will be absorbed in those areas.

Why PET Works

PET scans reveal metabolic information (as opposed to anatomical information), providing your physician with extra insight.

Because PET scanning often reveals disease much earlier than conventional diagnostic procedures (such as CT or MRI), it can help physicians diagnose disease faster.

What PET Sees

A PET scan puts time on your side! The earlier the diagnosis, the better the chance for successful treatment.

PET scans offer patients hope.

• PET can detect disease sooner and the earlier the detection, the more likely the cure! Prior to changes in structure that normally would show up on a CT or MRI scan, a PET scan can reveal metabolic changes in the body. Cancer is a metabolic process and PET is a metabolic imaging technique.
• PET shows the extent of disease - called staging - of lung cancer, colorectal cancer, melanoma, head and neck cancer, breast cancer, lymphoma and many other cancers. For patients whose cancer is newly diagnosed, it is important to determine if the cancer has spread to other parts of the body so that appropriate treatment can be started. PET can search the entire body for cancer in a single examination with a "whole body scan," revealing the primary site (s) as well as any metastases.
• PET shows whether a tumor is benign or malignant. Reports in scientific literature find that, in some tumors, PET correctly identifies detected lesions 95% of the time. Painful, costly and invasive surgery, such as thoracotomy, may no longer be necessary for diagnosis.
• PET shows the effectiveness of therapy. It is an excellent way to monitor progress and test recurrence of disease. For example, an ovarian cancer patient with a blood test that indicated a rise in her tumor marker levels had a PET scan after both CT and MRI scans were still registering no cancer. Only the PET scan showed the new cancer. After treatment, a subsequent PET scan revealed that the cancer was gone.

Is PET Safe?

Is a PET scan painless?

How does a PET scan differ from CT or MRI scans?