Hong Kong Cyclotron Laboratories Limited

Positron Emission Tomography (PET) is a medical imaging technology useful in diagnosis, staging and monitoring of treatment effects in many diseases including cancers. Patients are injected with a PET radiopharmaceutical and scanned using a PET -CT scanner. The PET radiopharmaceuticals localize in different tissues/ organs of the body based on the biochemical changes due to difference diseases stage. A typical example is 18F-Fluorodeoxyglucose (18F-FDG), which is a radioactive glucose analogue. Since cancer cells consume large amount of glucose to support their fast metabolism, they can be imaged as intense spots with high uptake of 18F-FDG. As chemotherapy suppress tumor cells metabolism and growth, their 18F-FDG uptake will be lower after therapy. A such , clinicians are able to diagnose cancers and monitor treatment of cancers.