PET-CT Imaging in Breast Cancer Patients: New Tracers, Future Directions

Abstract

Positron Emission Tomography using 18 F-fluoro-deoxi-glucose (FDG-PET) is giving a new perspective in disease staging and therapeutic response evaluation in daily oncological practice. To understand better the biological behavior and therapeutic response of breast cancer, new tracers and targets of molecular imaging are under investigation. These tracers may lead to non-invasive evaluation of the main, leading therapeutic decision-maker properties of metastatic breast cancer such as receptor status, proliferation activity and therapy resistance, and could also become predictive markers in the early measurement of therapeutic response in the neoadjuvant treatment of locally advanced breast cancer. However, these new agents are currently not available in the daily practice; the preliminary results are promising.