Dear AuntMinnie Member,
While MRI is the current standard for radiation planning in patients with recurrent pituitary tumors, postsurgical changes can make it challenging to delineate recurrent or residual disease, especially in patients who have undergone multiple prior surgeries, according to researchers.
In this edition of the Molecular Imaging Insider, we’ve highlighted a study that could improve outcomes. A team at the University of Wisconsin Madison explored whether adding Ga-68 DOTATATE PET to standard MRI could more accurately identify treatment volumes compared with MRI alone, with promising results. Click here for more details.
While tracers such as Ga-68 DOTATATE continue to show new potential, brain tracers are revealing new insights in Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative diseases. In one study we covered, a team at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston analyzed PET scans with F-18 flortaucipir and F-18 MK-6240 PET and found that higher levels of brain tau protein are associated with faster cognitive decline in women with Alzheimer’s disease. In another, a group at a Yale University in New Haven, CT, reported that a new tracer called F-18 SynVesT-1 outperformed FDG-PET in detecting brain changes associated with behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia.
Fibroblast activation protein inhibitor (FAPI) tracers also remain a hot area of research, with one recent study showing that FAPI-46 PET/CT outperforms FDG-PET/CT in detecting unclear hepatic lesions and another showing that a next-generation FAPI ligand called Ga-68 BED003 demonstrates high uptake across 19 diverse solid tumor types.
By far, however, a majority of our coverage of the field remains focused on prostate cancer research. In one study we recently covered, researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle found that total tumor volume (TTV) measurements derived from PET/CT imaging can improve survival predictions in patients receiving lutetium-177 (Lu-177) prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA)-617. In another study by the same group, SPECT scans provided early response information in patients after starting cycle one of treatment. Meanwhile, an international consortium has launched a five-year initiative to improve theranostic outcomes by improving the accuracy of dosimetry.
We also touched on AI research. A group in Japan reported that physicians far outperformed GPT-5 and five other large language models when interpreting F-18 FDG-PET images of patients with esophageal cancer, while a German team found that ChatGPT-4o and ChatGPT-5 identified the primary diagnosis in up to 89% of F-18 FDG-PET/CT brain scans.
Finally, with new radiopharmaceutical therapies to treat cancer advancing at a blistering pace, AuntMinnie has launched the Radiopharmaceutical Therapy Tracker to help keep up with the dynamic landscape.
For more molecular imaging news, be sure to check our Molecular Imaging content area regularly. And as always, if you have molecular imaging topics you'd like us to consider, please contact me.
Will Morton
Associate Editor
AuntMinnie.com
