Metabolic imaging with positron-emission tomography in the advanced-stage ovarian cancers

Despite technical advances in many areas of diagnostic radiology, the detection and imaging of advanced-stage ovarian carcinoma remains a challenge. The metabolic imaging using positron-emission tomography (PET), more recently integrated PET/CT can provide a different perspective and contribute to a best understanding of the disease. After to describe the advantages and the limits of this technology, this review reports the performances of FDG-PET in recent studies, in different settings: initial staging, restaging, detection of recurrences and predicting response to chemotherapy. PET imaging appears, like in others cancers, to be specially useful for the diagnosis of recurrence, when clinical or radiological recurrence is suspected or when CA125 levels are rising. Moreover, it influence significantly the patient management. But this imaging can also improve the detection of lesions in others settings, and we considers this potential impact treatment, particularly when a optimal surgery is indicated. At the end, PET with FDG or others tracers could be using to predict the early response to systemic therapy and to stop quickly an inefficient treatment.