Assessment of Malignant Skeletal Disease: Initial Experience with 18F-Fluoride PET/CT and Comparison Between 18F-Fluoride PET and 18F-Fluoride PET/CT

18F-Fluoride PET/CT was performed on 44 oncologic patients to evaluate its diagnostic accuracy in assessing malignant osse-ous involvement and in differentiating malignant from benign bone lesions. Methods: 18F-Fluoride PET and 18F-fluoride PET/CT were interpreted separately. Lesions showing in-creased 18F-fluoride uptake were categorized as malignant, be-nign, or inconclusive. The final diagnosis of lesions was based on histopathology, correlation with contemporaneous diagnos-tic CT or MRI, or clinical follow-up of at least 6 mo (mean, 10 3 mo). Results: Increased 18F-fluoride uptake was detected at 212 sites, including 111 malignant lesions, 89 benign lesions, and 12 lesions for which the final diagnosis could not be deter-mined. In a lesion-based analysis, the sensitivity of PET alone in differentiating benign from malignant bone lesions was 72% when inconclusive lesions were considered false negative an