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PET Radiotracers for Tumor Imaging

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Personalized Pathway-Activated Systems Imaging in Oncology

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Abstract

Positron emission tomography (PET) is a nuclear medicine imaging technique that produces a three-dimensional functional image of the living body. This system detects pairs of gamma rays emitted indirectly by a positron-emitting radiotracer, which is introduced into the body as a biologically active tracer. Three-dimensional images of radiotracer concentration within the body are then constructed by computer graphic analysis. PET is both a medical and study tool used in clinical oncology (medical imaging and diagnosis of tumors and the search for metastases) and in preclinical animal studies, where it allows repeated scans of the same subject. PET is particularly valuable in cancer research because it increases the statistical quality of the data (research subjects can act as their own controls) and substantially reduces the number of animals needed for individual studies.

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Acknowledgment

The author thanks Dr. Masayuki Fujinaga (National Institute of Radiological Sciences) for assistance in the preparation of this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Radiopharmaceutics Development, National Institute of Radiological Sciences, National Institutes for Quantum and Radiological Science and Technology, 4-9-1 Anagawa, 263-8555, Inage-ku, Chiba, Japan

    Ming-Rong Zhang

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  1. Ming-Rong Zhang
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Correspondence to Ming-Rong Zhang .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Medicine, Yokohama City University, Yokohama, Japan

    Tomio Inoue

  2. Vyripharm Biopharmaceuticals, University of Texas Health Science Center, Houston, Texas, USA

    David Yang

  3. Renji Hospital / Department of Nuclear Medicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China

    Gang Huang

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Zhang, MR. (2017). PET Radiotracers for Tumor Imaging. In: Inoue, T., Yang, D., Huang, G. (eds) Personalized Pathway-Activated Systems Imaging in Oncology. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-3349-0_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-3349-0_1

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