PET/CT for Target Delineation of Lung Cancer Before Radiation

In clinical routine of patients suffering from lung cancer, radiotherapy/radiation oncology represents one of the therapeutic hallmarks in the multimodal treatment besides or in com-bination with other local treatments such as surgery, but also systemic treatments such as chemotherapy, tyrosine kinase, and immune check-point inhibitors. Conventional morpho-logical imagings such as CT or MR are commonly used for staging, response assessment, but also for radiotherapy planning. However, advanced imaging techniques such as PET do continuously get increasing access to clinical routine overcoming limitations of standard imaging techniques by visualizing and quantifying molecular processes such as glucose metabolism, which is also of relevance for radiotherapy planning. This review article summarizes the current place of radiotherapy within the treatment regi-mens of patients with lung cancer and elucidates current concepts of standard morphologi-cal imaging for staging and radiotherapy planning. Moreover, the place of PET-based radiotherapy planning in a clinical context is presented and current methodological/techni-cal advances that do comprise a potential role for radiotherapy planning in lung cancer patients are discussed. Semin Nucl Med 52:673-680 (c) 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.