FDG PET
FDG PET is the standard PET scan. A radioactive sugar shows which tissues are burning glucose fast, which most cancers do.
Overview
FDG PET uses 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose, a radioactive sugar analogue taken up through GLUT transporters and trapped after phosphorylation by hexokinase, exploiting the Warburg effect by which most cancers burn glucose fast. It is the standard PET scan for staging and response in lymphoma (scored on the Deauville scale), lung cancer, melanoma, head and neck cancer and oesophageal cancer, with universal availability and decades of validation. Its limits are biological: infection and inflammation are also hot, normal brain uptake creates a high background, and indolent tumours are poorly seen. It is weak in prostate cancer, low-grade neuroendocrine tumours, mucinous cancers and some breast cancers, which is why target-specific tracers such as PSMA and SSTR ligands exist. FDG PET shows which tissues are consuming glucose fastest, and most, though not all, cancers do.
- Detector ring
- ¹⁸F-FDG (glucose)
- 511 keV photon pair
How it works
FDG is taken up via GLUT transporters and trapped after phosphorylation by hexokinase.
- Universal availability
- Decades of validation
- Non-specific: infection and inflammation are also hot
- Brain background
- Poor in indolent tumours
Dependencies
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The standard PET tracer for measuring how the brain is using energy; a pattern of low activity in particular brain regions can help doctors work out which type of dementia a patient has.
The radioactive sugar used in almost every cancer PET scan, approved in the 1990s and made fresh each day by regional cyclotrons.
Latest papers
topQuery for this technology: (TITLE:"FDG PET" OR ABSTRACT:"FDG PET" OR TITLE:"18F-FDG PET/CT" OR ABSTRACT:"18F-FDG PET/CT") AND (radiopharmaceutical OR radioligand OR radionuclide OR theranostic OR "nuclear medicine" OR "molecular imaging" OR radiotracer OR scintigraphy OR cancer OR tumor OR tumour OR oncology OR carcinoma OR lymphoma OR leukemia OR leukaemia OR myeloma OR sarcoma OR melanoma OR glioma). Results are unfiltered search hits about FDG PET, not a curated reading list.
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3Open tools
All open tools by front →Open-source software, hardware and data projects catalogued by a third party, the Open Medical Registry, that bear on this technology. Listing is not endorsement; check each project's own licence and validation before clinical use.
- ai4elifeMITsoftware
This data-centric AI repository implements a robust deep learning method (LFBNet) for fully automated tumor segmentation in whole-body [18]F-FDG PET/CT images.
From the Open Medical Registry (openmedical.sh), an MIT-licensed catalogue of open-source medicine. Blurbs are one line from each registry record; every project keeps its own licence.