What can a pet scan reveal?

Metabolism: Pet scans used radioactively labeled glucose (rarely dopamine, or other tracers) to see how these chemicals are being used in the brain (or sometimes heart or other organs). Abnormalities of either too high or too low of a rate of usage in some areas might suggest epilepsy, dementia, cancer, Parkinson's (if looking at dopamine), or other diseases.

Several things: An f18-fdg pet scan will highlight cells in your body that are consuming glucose at a different rate (usually higher) than its surrounding tissues. A neoplasm with abnormal growth consumes more glucose and thus could be revealed with this test . It is a very sensitive but not very specific test. Several other things that are not neoplasms such as infections or inflammation would also be revealed.

Physiology of lesion: Pet scans most often use a radioactive form of glucose, the energy source for most of the cells in our bodies. The pet scanner can detect and measure how much of the radioactive glucose analog, f-18 fdg, is in a particular organ or region. The areas using more glucose are hyper metabolic and generally more concerning. A low dose ct is also done at the same time to correlate anatomy with pet.