The Clinical Role of FDG PET in Malignant Lymphoma

Cheon, Gi Jeong

Abstract

FDG PET is a functional and metabolic imaging modality to detect lesions with altered glycolytic activity. Conventional imaging modalities, such as CT or MRI, provide tissue information based on anatomical and physiological changes. In most cases of malignant lymphoma, malignant cells have up-regulated glycolytic activity and increased uptake of FDG, an analogue of glucose. FDG PET can detect change in FDG uptake in lesions of malignant lymphoma and may be advantageous to differentiate malignant lesions from other non-malignant tissues over the conventional methods. For these reasons, FDG PET has become popular as a new imaging modality to diagnose many kinds of malignant tumors. FDG PET has a major impact on management of patients with malignant lymphoma in the differentiation of malignant lesions, monitoring the therapeutic response, and identifying the non-responders who could benefit from a different therapeutic strategy. At present, FDG PET appears to be one of the promising imaging modalities in the management of patients with ymphoma.