TY - JOUR AU - Treglia, Giorgio AU - Cason, Ernesto AU - Fagioli, Giorgio PY - 2013/04/30 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - Recent applications of nuclear medicine in diagnostics (I part) JF - Italian Journal of Medicine JA - Ital J Med VL - 4 IS - 2 SE - Reviews DO - 10.4081/itjm.2010.84 UR - https://www.italjmed.org/ijm/article/view/itjm.2010.84 SP - 84-91 AB - Introduction: Aim of this review is to describe the recent applications of nuclear medicine techniques in diagnostics, particularly in oncology. <br />Materials and methods: We reviewed scientific literature data searching for the current role of tomographic nuclear medicine techniques (SPECTand PET) in oncology and summarized the main applications of these techniques. <br />Results: Nuclear medicine techniques have a key role in oncology allowing early diagnosis of many tumours, an accurate staging of disease and evalutation of treatment response. Hybrid SPECT/CT and PET/CT imaging systems now provide metabolic and functional information from SPECTor PETcombined with the high spatial resolution and anatomic information of CT. The most frequent applications of SPECT/CT in oncology concern thyroid tumours, neuroendocrine tumours, bone metastases and lymph node mapping. Furthermore the evaluation of many tumours may benefit from PET/CT imaging. <br />Discussion: The recent development of new radiopharmaceuticals and the growth of hybrid tomographic devices, such as SPECT/CT and PET/CT, now permits molecular imaging of biologic processes at the cellular level to improve both the diagnosis and treatment of many tumours. ER -