PET/CT
Positron emission tomography–computed tomography is a nuclear medicine technique which combines, in a single gantry, a positron emission tomography scanner and an x-ray computed tomography scanner, to acquire sequential images from both devices in the same session, which are combined into a single superposed image. Thus, functional imaging obtained by PET, which depicts the spatial distribution of metabolic or biochemical activity in the body can be more precisely aligned or correlated with anatomic imaging obtained by CT scanning. Two- and three-dimensional image reconstruction may be rendered as a function of a common software and control system. PET-CT has revolutionized medical diagnosis in many fields, by adding precision of anatomic localization to functional imaging, which was previously lacking from pure PET imaging.
