Comparing radionuclide imaging methods

Charrier and colleagues evaluated nonmetastatic extra-adrenal paragangliomas of 25 patients using two imaging methods: [18F]FDOPA-PET and [111In] pentetreotide-SPECT somatostatin receptor scintigraphy (SRS). [18F]FDOPA-PET appeared to be the most reliable diagnostic tool, detecting 39/45 lesions, significantly more than SRS. Both scans detected significantly more head and neck lesions then abdominal lesions. The study concluded that [18F]FDOPA-PET was better for localizing small lesions due to its improved spatial resolution and as such should replace SRS as the first-line imaging procedure in order to diagnose paragangliomas more accurately. Charrier et al. (2011) Clinical Endocrinology 74 21–29.

Read the full article at DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2265.2010.03893.x.