The Use of Breathing Synchronized PET/CT Scans for the Detection of Malignant Lung and Liver Lesions and Assessment of Tumor Glycolysis

In this particular study the physicians want to use a new technique of how they obtain the PET/CT pictures. It is called breath-hold (BH) PET/CT. As the name suggests, they will ask the patient to hold their breath for about 20-30 seconds, and only during that time will they obtain pictures. This is repeated several times. In contrast to the standard PET/CT scan, they expect less blurring of the pictures, so that they can see the tumor better and measure the uptake of radioactive sugar in the tumor better and more reliably. Basically, this is the difference between taking pictures of a runner as compared to taking pictures of a person standing still. Since PET images need to be obtained over several minutes and people can not hold their breath for this extended time, we break the procedure into several cycles of 20-30 seconds (or longer, if possible) and then add all the frozen pictures in the end into one. They want to know if BH PET/CT scan measure changes in the cancer during therapy (i.e., from the baseline scan before therapy to the follow up scan at within 4 weeks later).