Gerald W. Keister

Complementary methods have helped physicians at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Texas improve the success rate of surgical treatments for ectopic parathyroid adenoma.

Carbon-11 tracer's 20-minute half life makes it too expensive for most community hospitals, but it can minimize radiation exposure and enable repeat measurements without interference from previous studies.

In the quantitative world of molecular imaging, the standardized uptake value (SUV) looms large as a key measure of tumor aggressiveness and therapeutic response.

Technical advances continue to make PET/CT and SPECT/CT suitable as platforms for molecular imaging. Pharmaceutical companies and specialty laboratories are developing and refining new radiopharmaceuticals. Imaging equipment manufacturers are incorporating more powerful and sensitive technology into their equipment and sophisticated reconstruction software is producing clearer images.