Whole-body imaging with PET/MRI

Whole-body positron emission tomography (PET) scanning with the radiolabeled glucose analogue 2-[fluorine-18]-fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose ¹⁸F-FDG) can identify areas of cancerous involvement and distinguish malignant from benign lesions and therefore, plays an important role in the diagnosis and management of patients with cancer. PET facilitates the evaluation of metabolic and molecular characteristics of a wide variety of cancers, but it is limited in its ability to visualize anatomical structures. Whole-body magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a promising diagnostic modality for the diagnosis and management of patients with cancer, because of its high anatomical resolution. Whole-body PET and whole-body MRI allow to evaluate both the primary tumor and for the presence of metastasis at the same time. The combination of these two excellent diagnostic imaging modalities into a single scanner offers several advantages in comparison to PET and MRI alone. A hybrid PET/MRI facilitates the accurate registration of metabolic and molecular aspects of the diseases with exact correlation to anatomical findings, improving the diagnostic value in identifying and characterizing of malignancies and tumor staging. Thus, hybrid PET/ MRI could be a very important diagnostic imaging modality in oncological applications in the decades to come, and possibly for use in cancer screening and cardiac imaging.