Improving Clinical PET/CT Image Quality in Retrospectively Reconstructed Breath-Hold Images

The patient has been referred for an FDG PET/CT scan. FDG is a form of sugar that contains a
small amount of radioactivity; it is used to see the size and possible spread of cancer in
the body.

Pictures of the body are taken on a machine called PET/CT scanner. The purpose of this
current study is to see if we, the investigators, can take clearer pictures of the tumor
than we could with our routine scan method. This would allow us to better see how FDG is
picked up by the tumor. PET/CT is presently one of the best tools for the detecting cancer
and determining its spread in the body. However, due to breathing motion, PET and CT images
may become blurred and the location of the tumor on CT and PET images may not match. We have
developed a new method that enables us to reduce image blurring and to measure the tumor
more accurately on PET images. In this study we want to compare two images: the standard
PET/CT scan, and the PET/CT scan pictures taken with our new method.

If successful, we may use this new method for clinical routine in the future.