PET imaging

The Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust have had a state of the art PET/CT scanner since the second quarter of 2013. PET/CT is an innovative nuclear medicine diagnostic technique combining functional and anatomical information. Radiation from a tracer is detected by a ring of detectors (PET: functional information) and fused with anatomical information from the CT scan. The most widely used tracer is fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG). It is an analogue of sugar and is taken up by cancer cells and inflammation. The main applications are in oncology, inflammatory and infectious diseases, neurology and cardiology.

The nuclear medicine department opened the new PET centre in May 2013. We use a range of tracers to provide dedicated high quality imaging to our patients including FDG, gallium dotatate and flourocholine. We also scan cancer patients and patients with inflammatory and infectious conditions. Future developments may include brain PET imaging.