PET is an advanced medical imaging examination that provides detailed information on the function of an organ or system in your body. PET scans are commonly used to evaluate and diagnose cancers, neurological (brain) disorders, and cardiovascular (heart) diseases.
During a PET scan, a radioactive tracer is injected and images of your body are recorded using a PET scanner. A camera detects the emissions resulting from the injected radioactive tracer, and a computer then creates multi-dimensional images of the part of your body being examined. The injected radiotracers usually accumulate in diseased tissues more than healthier tissues. Most PET scanners are combined with computerised tomography (CT) scans. This further allows the structural information provided by CT images to be combined with the PET’s functional information.