Abstract
Nuclear medicine is dened as: the scientic and clinical discipline in which free radionuclides and radionuclide compounds, redistributed in vivo or in vitro by physical or chemical mechanisms, are used for diagnostic, therapeutic or investigative purposes [1]. It seems that the above denition of Nuclear Medicine well includes the fact that Nuclear Medicine embraces into very important areas such as molecular imaging, cellular imaging and tissue imaging. Related to the interesting papers of Cerci S. S. et al in HJNM [2, 3], we may additionally state the following: During the last decade much research has drawn attention to the role of nuclear medicine as a promising modality in gynecology. 18 F-FDG PET/CT highlighted its useful role in gynecological imaging, especially, for the investigation of gynecological 18 cancers. In high grade endometrial cancer, F-FDG PET/CT accurately detected distant metastases in the abdomen and extra-abdominal regions and the above ndings inuenc ed 18 patients' management [4]. F-FDG PET/CT also performed better than conventional imaging (pelvis US, CT, MRI ) in detecting recurrence in post-therapy patients with endometrial carcinoma [5]. In regard to primary ovarian cancer, PET/CT was found to be superior to pelvis US, abdomino-pelvic CT and pelvic MRI for the diagnosis of malignant ovarian tumors and valuable for identifying metastatic ovarian cancer [6, 7]. Cerci S. S. et al in an original research [2] studied the relation between SUVmax, Hif-1a (hypoxia inducible factor), adrenomedullin angiogenetic factor and Bcl-2 (antiapoptotic factor) in cases with endometrial cancer. The pathnder results showed that SUVmax, is not associated with Hif-1a, adrenomedullin or Bcl-2 as expected and also that 18 increased uptake of F-FDG in endometrial cancer seemed to be independent of Hif-1a and its downstream factors. In the near future we will be able to study hypoxia also in other types of human tumors and perhaps perform a better evaluation of cancer metabolism [2]. It is interesting that pelvic MRI imaging and whole-body PET/CT play complementary roles in imaging evaluation of gynecological cancer. MRI diagnoses and denes tumor extent in central pelvic soft tissues while PET/C T diagnoses lymphadenopathy and extra-pelvic metastases. Fused PET/CT may
Published Version
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