Clinical and Research Applications of Quantitative PET Imaging.

In recent years, three important quantitative concepts in PET analysis have been developed: partial volume correction of standardized uptake value (SUV) in small lesions, dual-time point and delayed PET imaging, and assessment of global metabolic activity in the whole organ or of a particular diseased tissue(s). In this article, we discuss these novel concepts, their advantages over current quantitative techniques, and their potential clinical applications. We also describe the complicated kinetic modeling and the conventional SUV methods that have been used in the practice of clinical PET.