Dear AuntMinnie Member,
PET flexes its muscle in a pair of articles we're featuring this week in our Molecular Imaging Digital Community. One story highlights the modality's usefulness in predicting which patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) may progress to Alzheimer's, while another illustrates the utility of a dedicated PET mammography system.
In the first story, a multinational research team compared PET to genetic testing in determining which patients with MCI later developed Alzheimer's-type dementia. Their goal was to be able to separate patients with Alzheimer's from those whose cognitive impairment has other causes.
They found that PET shows good sensitivity and specificity, exceeding that of genetic testing. When PET and genetic testing were used together, the researchers achieved sensitivity and specificity of 100%. Read all about it by clicking here.
In the second study, U.S. investigators tested the performance of a commercially available dedicated PET mammography (PEM) system. They found that the PEM unit was able to correctly assess several characteristics of malignant lesions, and also showed good performance in dense breast tissue and for identifying ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS).
Get more details by clicking here, and read about other recent research in the field of molecular imaging by visiting the Molecular Imaging Digital Community at molecular.auntminnie.com.
