ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights current and future applications of molecular imaging, and describes how brachytherapy can uniquely exploit positron emission tomography (PET) studies for improved cancer treatment. Over the past two decades, PET and particularly positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) have become part of standard of care in various areas of cancer medicine. Most commonly, PET/CT utilizes a glucose analog tracer to exploit biochemical and physiological differences between tumor and normal cells. Fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG)-PET/CT studies in cervical cancer have particularly focused on its now clearer role in better regional and distant staging and treatment outcomes prognostication. Radiotherapy represents a mainstay curative-intent treatment for localized prostate cancer. Despite improvements in the delivery of radiotherapy, 20–65" of radically treated patients experience relapse or locally persistent/recurrent disease. More recently, small peptide probes directed against prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) have consistently shown superiority to choline-based PET/CT in characterizing local and distant disease.
