The role of PET in monitoring therapy.

Abstract

Positron emission tomography (PET) is being increasingly used for the evaluation of patients with known or suspected cancer at all phases of the management process from diagnosis, through staging to follow-up after treatment. The role of PET in therapeutic monitoring is expanding rapidly due to its ability to provide earlier and more robust identification of non-responders than provided by conventional non-invasive imaging approaches. PET can thereby potentially provide important benefits to the individual patient by allowing an earlier change to alternative treatments that may be more efficacious or by avoiding the unnecessary toxicity related to ineffective therapy. As therapies become eve..