Diagnosed with cancer and are undergoing active treatment, assess treatment response efficiency and perform cancer monitoring with PET/CT Scan!
Facing a post treatment surveillance stage, undergo early diagnosis of possible cancer recurrence to ensure timely and maximally efficient repeated treatment, if necessary!
One of the main differences between PET scans and other imaging tests like computed tomography (CT) scan or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is that the PET scan reveals the cellular level metabolic changes occurring in an organ or tissue. This is important and unique because disease processes often begin with functional changes at the cellular level. A PET scan can often detect these very early changes whereas a CT or MRI detect changes later as the disease begins to cause changes in the anatomical structure of organs or tissues. A cancer that’s diagnosed at an early stage, before it has had a chance to get too big or spread is more likely to be treated successfully. If the cancer has spread, the treatment becomes more difficult, and generally a person’s chances of surviving are much lower.
It is important to emphasize that PET/CT is a multimodality whole-body scan. Other conventional high-resolution modalities as CT alone and MR excel at providing structural details however they provide little insight into tumor physiology. PET is used to provide insight into a tumor's biologic functions and its surrounding microenvironment. Thus, PET may detect biochemical changes in an organ or tissue that can identify the onset of a disease process before anatomical changes related to the disease can be seen with other imaging processes, such as computed tomography (CT scan) or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
Marika Kalnina
Head of Medical Department, Nuclear Medicine Physician / Radiologist
There are oncological diseases as e.g. ovarian cancer when we see an elevated CA-125 level in dynamic modelling at the stage where no changes are yet demonstrated by ultrasound and computer tomography (CT). It is one of clinical situations when PET/CT scan, due to its sensitivity and specificity, will disclose disease activity earlier. The imaging tool recognizes pathological formations from up to 1 cm in size and allows for identification of cancer-related formations.
Aija Gerina-Berzina
Oncologist-Chemotherapist
According to literature – from up to 9 millimetres. But in practice we can see smaller ones. A lymph node of 4 millimetres in size, but it glows! We measure intensity of radiation accumulation, which is an objective parameter, and it shows that the node intensively consumes glucose. It is clear that the node is malignant.
Lilita Roznere
Nuclear Medicine Physician / Radiologist
Specifically, PET/CT studies evaluate the metabolism of a particular organ or tissue, so that information about the physiology (functionality) and anatomy (structure) of the organ or tissue is evaluated, as well as its biochemical properties. Integrating PET with a CT maximizes their separate strengths and provides anatomic localization of physiologic processes with detailed visualization of a tumor's structure. The availability of multi-modality (hybrid) imaging with PET/CT improves our ability to characterize lesions and to affect treatment decisions and patient management.
Marika Kalnina
Head of Medical Department, Nuclear Medicine Physician / Radiologist
We are pleased to be the first medicine centre in Latvia providing a wide range of cancer diagnostics with high quality PET/CT technology and especially proud to be among the rare European PET/CT centres offering progressive prostate cancer diagnostics with innovative 68Ga-PSMA. We are also proud to be the only PET/CT facility in the Baltic countries having on-site cyclotron for production of positron emitters and supplying them straight to the examination site. Rīga Stradiņš university Nuclear Medicine Clinic has formed a stable team of highly qualified professionals with international educational and training background in the Nuclear Medicine. I am sure that besides the high-quality examination the patient will also be pleased due to the very competitive price, knowledge of our professional staff and welcoming attitude.
Vitālijs Skrīvelis
Head of RSU Nuclear Medicine Clinic