Other services - Oncology
A PET-CT imaging is a combined diagnostic procedure that means the simultaneous use of PET (positron emission tomography), which belongs to nuclear medicine, and CT (computed tomography).
In the most up-to-date PET-CT diagnostic devices the PET and CT scanners are built into a single combined imaging system so that the images from a single examination reveal both functional and anatomical information.
PET-CT scanning enables
as well as the precise and safe examination of:
During the absolutely painless examination, a substance marked with radioactive isotope is introduced to the patient by intravenous injection. Most often it is grape sugar molecules that are marked with the radioactive positron isotope. The sugar-like substance injected is taken up by cells depending on the intensity of their metabolism. The more intensive the metabolism of a cell is, the more sugar it uses within a given time frame. Due to their uncontrolled proliferation, tumour cells use significantly more sugar than normal cells. After treatment (e.g. chemotherapy) on the other hand, the reduced or dead cells absorb significantly less sugar than normal. Thus this screening makes it possible to reveal live cancer tissue and separate it from cancer cells that died as a consequence of successful treatment.
PET-CT scans as up-to-date combined imaging diagnostic procedures provide great help in detecting most types of cancerous diseases with high reliability, determining the exact location of existing tumours and the extent of metastases in the body and revealing the early phase of the spreading of tumours. By precisely determining the already developed malignant cancerous diseases they make the targeted selection of the most efficient therapy possible.
