Clinical applications and advances of positron emission tomography with fluorine-18-fluorodeoxyglucose (18F-FDG) in the diagnosis of liver neoplasms

Positron emission tomography (PET) using 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (18F-FDG) has been widely used not only for detecting and staging malignant tumours but also for monitoring therapy response and for differentiating malignant lesions from benign lesions. However, the sensitivity of 18F-FDG PET for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is low. Recent research about the novel drug shows that the sensitivity of 11C-acetate PET for HCC is higher than that of 18F-FDG PET and 11C-acetate also indicates tumour cell differentiation. 18F-FDG PET proved to be highly sensitive in detecting hepatic metastases from different primaries. 18F-FDG PET has also been shown to be useful and more accurate than conventional imaging modalities in demonstrating the effect of local treatments in liver tumours. With the development of small animal imaging, animal research about 18F-FDG PET is increasing.