Artifactual spinal metastases imaged by PET/CT: a case report

J Nucl Med Technol. 2005 Dec;33(4):230-1.

Abstract

A 55-y-old patient with multiple myeloma presented for restaging after chemotherapy and radiation. The patient had undergone vertebroplasty of multiple thoracic vertebrae because of painful compression fractures. The 18F-FDG PET images showed increased activity at the T8 and T10-T12 vertebral bodies. Comparison of the attenuation-corrected and non-attenuation-corrected images demonstrated that the activity was due to an artifact of attenuation correction. The CT scan correlated the sites of vertebroplasty to the 4 foci of increased uptake of 18F-FDG. The increasing use of vertebroplasty for malignant spinal fractures warrants vigilance for this artifact.

Publication types

  • Case Reports

MeSH terms

  • Artifacts*
  • False Positive Reactions
  • Humans
  • Multiple Myeloma / diagnosis*
  • Multiple Myeloma / secondary*
  • Neoplasm Recurrence, Local / diagnosis
  • Positron-Emission Tomography / methods
  • Spinal Neoplasms / diagnosis*
  • Thoracic Vertebrae / diagnostic imaging*
  • Thoracic Vertebrae / surgery
  • Tomography, X-Ray Computed / methods