There is good news and bad news with breast cancer. While incidence rates have decreased by 2 percent per year between 1999 and 2006 and breast cancer death and diagnosis have largely declined because of improved screening and training techniques, current imaging methods have fallen short on detecting the disease effectively and early in certain patient populations.

SPECT/CT is making notable inroads in imaging infection. It allows the detection of unsuspected infectious foci, especially in areas that are not well investigated by other imaging modalities. It is improving diagnostic performance and treatment management for specific infections such as in bone, the diabetic foot, post-device implantation, fever of unknown origin (FUO), orthopedics and in post transplant patients.

Preclincal Study Digest | Parkinsons, Nanoparticles & Ovarian Cancer

Orlando Heart Center, a 23-physician four-office practice close to Orlando, Fla., prepared for the 2010 reimbursement cuts by investing in a PET scanner. The center since has shifted more SPECT patients to PET, resulting in multiple benefits for the practice and patients.

The nuclear medicine community learned many lessons from the shortage of molybdenum-99 (Mo-99), the mother radioisotope of technetium-99m (Tc-99m), during the recent shutdowns of  the Canadian National Research Universal (NRU) reactor in Chalk River, Ontario, and High Flux Reactor (HFR) in Petten, the Netherlands.

In this issue, we address several important issues related to the quality of care and the business of molecular imaging. The recent 99mTc shortage made it clear that long established imaging studies will eventually be replaced by more robust and higher quality alternatives. This will foremost affect two major applications of nuclear medicine, myocardial perfusion and bone imaging.

Evidence has clearly shown the impact of PET/CT imaging in initial treatment strategiesdiagnosis and initial staging as well as in the subsequent treatment strategiestreatment monitoring and restaging/detection of suspected recurrence in various cancers. The molecular imaging community needs to work with industry and regulators to emphasize that patient-focused care benefits everyone.

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer among men worldwide and is the second leading cause of death in men after lung cancer in the U.S.