The Role of Positron-Emission Tomography in Diagnosis and Assessment of Treatment Response in Takayasu Arteritis

Takayasu arteritis is a nonspecific granulomatous inflammatory arteriopathy of unknown cause that results in occlusive obliteration and less commonly aneurysmal degeneration of large and medium-sized elastic arteries. The diagnosis of Takayasu arteritis and the assessment of its progression and extent remain challenging, especially in patients presenting with a constellation of non-specific symptoms and laboratory tests. The standard diagnostic procedures include biopsy, arteriography, sonography, and magnetic resonance angiography. However, these procedures are invasive or largely operator-dependent, and document only morphological changes such as stenosis, occlusion and aneurysmal transformation which mainly occur in late stages of the disease. On the other hand, Positron-emission tomography is an operator-independent, non-invasive metabolic imaging modality which plays a major role in diagnosis of nonspecific inflammatory diseases. We report a case in which Positron-emission tomography was applied to the detection of Takayasu arteritis and assessment of its disease progression