PET / CT imaging
The ability to actually see inside a patient’s body is critical to providing proper diagnosis and treatment. And no other imaging technique is as capable of demonstrating the internal chemistry of the body as well as PET / CT.
Positron Emission Tomography (PET) locates the metabolic signal of actively growing cancer cells in the body; it can actually detect both chemical and metabolic changes in these cells before anatomic and structural changes have had time to develop. Computerized Tomography (CT) provides a detailed picture of patients’ internal anatomy, revealing the location, size, and even the shape of abnormal cancerous growths.
Evergreen’s PET / CT scanner is a state-of-the-art, dual-purpose imaging device that utilizes both technologies simultaneously, then fuses the resulting images into a single precise and sophisticated computer overlay – providing complete information on both tumor location and metabolism, and identifying the first step toward designing an individualized treatment plan.
With one continuous full-body scan (often lasting less than 30 minutes) PET / CT not only detects the presence of cancer, but also the biology of cancer – and reveals how aggressive the disease is. This knowledge enables physicians to develop appropriate, more individualized therapy approaches.