Increasing feasibility and utility of 18F-FDOPA PET for the management of glioma

Introduction: Despite radical treatment therapies, glioma continues to carry with it a uniformly poor prognosis. Patients diagnosed with WHO Grade IV glioma (glioblastomas; GBM) generally succumb within two years, even those with WHO Grade III anaplastic gliomas and WHO Grade II gliomas carry prognoses of 2-5 and 2 years, respectively. PET imaging with F-18-FDOPA allows in vivo assessment of the metabolism of glioma relative to surrounding tissues. The high sensitivity of F-18-DOPA imaging grants utility for a number of clinical applications