Lung Cancer Research Paper

Introduction:

Lung cancer is one of the wide spread cancers related death in the world (1). The most widely recognized destinations of metastatic spread in lung cancer are the adrenal organs, cerebrum, bones and liver.

Bone metastasis is a type of cancer where cancer cells starts from an organ and then break, enter the bloodstream, and move to the bone. Studies showed that bone metastasis is already found in 20-30% of patient when the initial diagnosis of lung cancer is occurred. This percent becomes 30-60% when a morbid anatomy is made. In fact, about 40% of these patients have no symptoms showed the involvement of bone metastasis. Thus, several diagnosis techniques are needed to detect these bone metastasis.

Bone scintigraphy (BS) is one

PET is a remarkable technique that changed the role of nuclear medicine not only because it works better and gives more precise and efficient diagnosis than other techniques but also because it is the fastest diagnostic specialty. It can detect the early stage of disease before any other imaging tool does.

PET is a type of nuclear medicine imaging that utilized to observe metabolic processes in the body using small amounts of radioactive materials called radiotracers (1). PET with [F-18] fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG), which is an analogue of glucose, tracer is the most common type of PET scan that explore the possibility of cancer metastasis (spreading to other sites). It gives significant practical data taking into account the expanded glucose uptake and glycolysis of cancer cells and depicts metabolic abnormalities before morphological changes happen.

Computed tomography (CT) is another type of imaging technique that that gives multiple x-rays images of the internal body organs, bones, soft tissue and structure. It is based on the absorption of X-rays radiations that pass through exit the body

These radioisotopes are produced either in cyclotron such as N13, C11, and F18 or by in radioisotope generator such as Ga68 and Rb82. When a positron is emitted, it collides a nearby electron in the tissue and gives 2 photons which then will move in opposite directions (4). The PET device is equipped with coincidence detectors that detect these photons as they radiate simultaneously. Not all coincidence events are favorable. A single unaired photons happen when either one of these two photons is not detected by the detector or absorbed by the body. These unpaired photons are excluded by the coincidence detector. However, various processes happen in PET scanning that decrease the image quality are needed to be considered in quantitative PET scanning. As a result, additional techniques are needed for attenuation correction which is an important correction since photons emitted from the body, are attenuated to a greater range than those emitted from the periphery. Thus, the use of PET/CT isn’t only useful for anatomic localization but also for attenuation