Nuclear medicine in urological cancers: what is new?

The diffusion of PET/computed tomography has opened up a new role for nuclear imaging in urological oncology. Prostate cancer is evaluated with choline ((11)C or (18)F) PET due to a lack of sensitivity of (18)F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG). However, many new tracers, such as (18)F-fluorocyclobutane-1-carboxylic acid and (68)Ga-prostate-specific membrane antigen, are under investigation, offering promising results in the particular setting of radically treated patients with biochemical relapse. The performance of (18)F-FDG depends on the histological type; indeed, renal cell cancer may present variable metabolic uptake. In this field, mainly antibodies labeled with positron emitters are under clinical evaluation. Finally, (18)F-FDG PET/computed tomography has been proven to show good accuracy in detecting metastatic testicular and bladder cancers, despite not having valid results in detecting local disease. The urological cancer diagnostic process is currently under continuous development.