Basics and advances of quantitative PET imaging

Abstract

Positron emission tomography (PET) has been enjoying outstanding quantitative features since its inception in diagnostic clinical imaging. These capabilities have served the evolution and diagnostic performance of PET in many circumstances including research and development as well as clinical routines. However, this has been made with extensive efforts exerted on technical, physical, and instrumental levels. Quantitative PET can be very simple but also sometimes need to be very complicated and cumbersome. This depends heavily on the purpose of the imaging task. Static and dynamic PET are the two different modes of data acquisition from which the relevant type of information is extracted and physiologically interpreted. The most commonly used form of data quantitation in PET is the standardized uptake value (SUV) that may take several forms. This later quantitative index, despite being simple to calculate showing effectiveness in a number of malignancies, is prone to many technical and biological errors if not properly adjusted. All of the above have been reviewed in this chapter along with other new emerging volumetric and disease burden quantitative metrics.