Mercy Cancer Services
Positron Emission Tomography
(PET)
A PET scan allows physicians to measure the body's
abnormal molecular cell activity to detect:
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Cancer (such as breast cancer, lung cancer,
colorectal cancer, lymphoma, melanoma and other skin cancers),
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Brain Disorders (such as Alzheimer's Disease,
Parkinson's Disease, and epilepsy), and
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Heart Disease (such as coronary artery disease).
PET scans are simple, painless, and fast - offering
patients and their families life-saving information that helps
physicians detect and diagnose diseases early and quickly begin
treatment.
When disease strikes, the biochemistry of your
tissues and cells change. In cancer, cells begin to grow at a much
faster rate. A PET scan takes a digital picture of abnormal cellular
structure.
PET scans give information about the body's
chemistry that is not available with other imaging techniques. Because
PET scanning often reveals disease much earlier than conventional
diagnostic procedures (such as CT or MRI), it can help physicians
diagnose disease faster.
Prior to changes in structure that normally would
show up on a CT or MRI scan, a PET scan can reveal metabolic changes in
the body. Cancer is a metabolic process and PET is a metabolic imaging
technique.
PET shows the extent of disease - called staging -
of lung cancer, colorectal cancer, melanoma, head and neck cancer,
breast cancer, lymphoma and many other cancers.
For patients whose cancer is newly diagnosed, it is
important to determine if the cancer has spread to other parts of the
body so that appropriate treatment can be started. PET can search the
entire body for cancer in a single examination with a "whole body scan,"
revealing the primary site (s) as well as any metastases.
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