(18)FDG PET/CT appearance in primary cutaneous diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, leg type.

We report the case of a 70-year-old woman who presented with a small and painless red skin nodule in the right lower leg, which rapidly and significantly increased in size over few weeks and developed a central eschar. Skin biopsy was consistent with primary cutaneous diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, leg type (PCDBCL-LT), an aggressive and rare cutaneous lymphoma. F-FDG PET/CT showed a hypermetabolic soft tissue mass in the right leg with no evidence of systemic involvement of disease.

CT, MRI, and 18F-FDG PET/CT in a patient with nested stromal epithelial tumor of the liver.

An 11-year-old girl presented with abnormal weight gain and was found to have hepatomegaly. MRI of the abdomen revealed a 20-cm hepatic mass. F-FDG PET/CT showed a large hypermetabolic calcified hepatic mass and couple of mildly hypermetabolic pulmonary nodules with associated intrathoracic lymphadenopathy. Liver biopsy was consistent with nested stromal epithelial tumor of the liver, a rare nonhepatocytic, nonbiliary primary neoplasm of the liver associated with variable calcification and ossification.

An assessment of the impact of incorporating time-of-flight information into clinical PET/CT imaging.

The introduction of fast scintillators with good stopping power for 511-keV photons has renewed interest in time-of-flight (TOF) PET. The ability to measure the difference between the arrival times of a pair of photons originating from positron annihilation improves the image signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The level of improvement depends upon the extent and distribution of the positron activity and the time resolution of the PET scanner. While specific estimates can be made for phantom imaging, the impact of TOF PET is more difficult to quantify in clinical situations. The results presented here quantify the benefit of TOF in a challenging phantom experiment and then assess both qualitatively and quantitatively the impact of incorporating TOF information into the reconstruction of clinical studies. A clear correlation between patient body mass index and gain in SNR was observed in this study involving 100 oncology patient studies, with a gain due to TOF ranging from 1.1 to 1.8, which is consistent with the 590-ps time resolution of the TOF PET scanner. The visual comparison of TOF and non-TOF images performed by two nuclear medicine physicians confirmed the advantages of incorporating TOF into the reconstruction, advantages that include better definition of small lesions and image details, improved uniformity, and noise reduction.

Evaluation of liver metastases after radiofrequency ablation: utility of 18F-FDG PET and PET/CT.

OBJECTIVE: Our objective was to review the CT appearance of liver metastases after radiofrequency ablation and to describe the imaging findings of and utility of (18)F-FDG PET and PET/CT in assessing tumor recurrence after ablation. CONCLUSION: (18)F-FDG PET and PET/CT can provide added diagnostic information compared with conventional imaging in patients after radiofrequency ablation of liver metastases and can be useful in guiding repeat ablation procedures.