Estimated cumulative radiation dose from PET/CT in children with malignancies: a 5-year retrospective review.

BACKGROUND: The increasing use of serial PET/CT scans in the management of pediatric malignancies raises the important consideration of radiation exposure in children. OBJECTIVE: To estimate the cumulative radiation dose from PET/CT studies to children with malignancy and to compare with the data in literature. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Two hundred forty-eight clinical PET/CT studies performed on 78 patients (50 boys/28 girls, 1.3 to 18 years old from December 2002 to October 2007) were retrospectively reviewed under IRB approval. The whole-body effective dose (ED) estimates for each child were obtained by estimating the effective dose from each PET/CT exam performed using the ImPACT Patient Dosimetry Calculator for CT and OLINDA for PET. RESULTS: The average number of PET/CT studies was 3.2 per child (range: 1 to 14 studies). The average ED of an individual CT study was 20.3 mSv (range: 2.7 to 54.2), of PET study was 4.6 mSv (range: 0.4 to 7.7) and of PET/CT study was 24.8 mSv (range: 6.2 to 60.7). The average cumulative radiation dose per patient from CT studies was 64.4 mSv (range: 2.7 to 326), from PET studies was 14.5 mSv (range: 2.8 to 73) and from PET/CT studies was 78.9 mSv (range: 6.2 to 399). CONCLUSION: The radiation exposure from serial PET/CT studies performed in pediatric malignancies was considerable; however, lower doses can be used for both PET and CT studies. The ALARA principle must be applied without sacrificing diagnostic information.

Phenotypic appearances of prostate utilizing PET-MRI and PET-CT with 68Ga-PSMA, radiolabelled choline and 68Ga-DOTATATE.

The objective of this study was to highlight the role of multimodality imaging and present the differential diagnosis of abnormal tracer accumulation in the prostate and periprostatic tissue. Our departments have performed molecular imaging of the prostate utilizing PET-CT and PET-MRI with a range of biomarkers including F-FDG, radiolabelled choline, Ga-DOTATATE PET-CT and Ga-PSMA images. We retrospectively reviewed the varying appearances of the prostate gland in different diseases and incidental findings in periprostatic region. The differential diagnosis of pathologies related to prostate and periprostatic tissue on multimodality imaging includes malakoplakia, rhabdomyosarcoma, lymphoma, prostate cancer, neuroendocrine tumours, uchida changes, rectoprostatic fistula, synchronous malignancies, lymphocoele and schwanoma. There exists a wide differential for abnormal tracer accumulation in the prostate gland. As a radiologist and nuclear medicine physician, it is important to be aware of range of prostatic and periprostatic pathologies.