Combined PET/CT with iodine-124 in diagnosis of spread metastatic thyroid carcinoma:: a case report

Iodine-124 positron emission tomography (PET) is a useful 3D imaging technique for diagnosis and management of thyroid diseases. The difficulty in interpretation of the PET scans with highly selective tracers, such as iodine-124, is the lack of identifiable anatomical structures, so an accurate anatomical localization of foci presenting abnormal uptake is problematic. Consequently, a combined PET/CT scanner can resolve these difficulties by co-registering PET and CT data in a single session allowing a correlation of functional and morphologic imaging. A case is presented where iodine-124 produced by a clinical cyclotron and FDG were used to acquire images with a combined PET/CT scanner for clinical staging. On the basis of the PET/CT exams the treatment of the patient was modified.