Instrumentation for Positron Emission Mammography.

Positron emission tomography (PET) is becoming widely accepted for the diagnosis and staging of cancer. Whole-body PET can detect not only primary breast cancer but distant metastases as well. Recently, several groups have developed small PET instruments specifically for the detection of primary breast cancer. These positron emission mammography (PEM) scanners, have the potential of being less expensive and providing higher spatial resolution than whole-body scanners. Several designs are compatible with conventional mammography and can combine the structural imaging of radiograph mammography with the functional imaging of PET in a manner similar to PET-CT scanners. This article explores the requirements to obtain good quality PEM images and various designs that have been implemented, and provides some examples of PEM images.