Staging of lung cancer.

Imaging techniques play a vital role in the diagnosis, staging, and follow-up of patients who have lung cancer. For this purpose, PET has become an important adjunct to conventional imaging techniques such as chest radiography, CT, ultrasonography, and MR imaging. The ability of PET to differentiate the metabolic properties of tissues allows more accurate assessment of undetermined lung lesions, mediastinal lymph nodes, or extrathoracic abnormalities, tumor response after induction treatment, and detection of disease recurrence.