Course Outline
I: Orientation: Tour of PET facility: Scanners, image acquisition workstations, patient injection area (Drs. Czernin and Allen-Auerbach)
Attendees will receive the UCLA PET procedure manual and a CD ROM entitled "The Interactive FDG PET Whole Body Atlas Version 1.0" as well as recently reviewed articles relating to the clinical application of PET.
II: Patient Preparation and PET acquisition protocols
Review of patient preparation for oncology, brain, and cardiac studies
dietary preparation, diabetic patients, use of muscle relaxants.
Review of PET acquisition protocols for oncology, brain, and cardiac studies
Dosing, tracer uptake period, whole body vs regional imaging post-void imaging, value of uretheral catheterization, bowel preparation
II: Introduction to PET image interpretation (Dr. Schiepers)
Reviewing image files on the computer workstation
III: PET Oncology: Indications and Diagnostic Accuracy (Dr. Czernin)
1. HCFA approved indications: Solitary pulmonary nodule, staging of lung cancer, recurrent COLORectal cancer, melanoma, and lymphoma.
IV: PET Neurology: Indications and Diagnostic Accuracy (Dr. Silverman)
1. Refractory seizure disorder: localization of seizure focus.
V: PET Cardiology: Indications and Diagnostic Accuracy (Dr. Schelbert)
3. Evaluation of stress-induced ischemia
VI: Basic physics of PET data acquisition and image reconstruction (Dr. Dahlbom)
Components of a PET scanner
VII: Production of PET radioisotope (Larry Pang, C.N.M.T.)
Tour of radioisotope production facility
Case examples demonstrating normal PET anatomy
Case examples demonstrating common pitfalls:
e.g. neck muscles, heart, liver, stomach, bowel, uretheral activity
Semiquantitative analysis of tumor uptake (SUV determination)
2. Other indications: Head and neck, breast, esophageal, ovarian cancer
2. Recurrent brain tumor: Differentiate between necrosis and malignancy
3. FDG PET for dementia
4. Assessment of myocardial viability
Transmission rod source for attenuation correction
2D vs 3D acquisition
Image reconstruction: Filtered back projection versus iterative image reconstruction
Methods of attenuation correction: calculated for brain, measured for whole body