Fig. 3
Illustrative example of PET/CT for the detection of recurrent CRC. A 54-year-old man with adenocarcinoma in the sigmoid colon (pT4, pN2, M0) received three cycles of neoadjuvant chemotherapy followed by radical surgery in May 2010 and five cycles of adjuvant chemotherapy. The patient presented with one significant increase in CEA from 1.4 μg/L (May 2011) to 5.1 μg/L (November 2011), and he underwent an 18F-FDG PET/CT scan with low-dose CT. Intraabdominal as well as retroperitoneal lymph nodes were found to exhibit pathological FDG uptake (SUVmax = 8.1), especially at foci near the liver hilus and portacaval area (PET anterior view (a); CT coronal image (b); PET/CT coronal fused image (c). The patient had recurrence on the basis of radiological and clinical follow-up and died shortly after the study period. A conventional CT scan of the thorax, abdomen and pelvis in usual surveillance was carried out 41 days earlier with no evidence of recurrence or metastasis