Treatment Options

Sarcoma PET Imaging Program

PET scans are a non-invasive diagnostic tool that is especially helpful in diagnosing and monitoring sarcomas.

SCCA patients have access to the Sarcoma PET Imaging Program at UW Medicine, a nationally known project that is funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Dr. Janet F. Eary, professor of nuclear medicine and head of the Nuclear Medicine Department at UW Medicine, heads the program.

PET (positron emission tomography) scans are used both to diagnose tumors and to monitor their response to treatment. Dr. Ernest U. Conrad III, director of SCCA's Sarcoma Service, says that PET imaging has proved to be more significant in helping doctors make decisions about treatment for sarcoma patients, and in showing whether or not a cancer is responding to treatment, than traditional pathology tests under the microscope.

Your doctors may ask that you have PET scans as well as CT scans or MRIs, because the different scans are complementary and each provides different information that is useful in the treatment of sarcoma.

PET scans help doctors distinguish between high-grade tumors, which are likely to metastasize, or spread, and low-grade or benign tumors, which will not metastasize. Patients with high-grade tumors will be monitored with PET scans throughout their treatment, to make sure that the cancer is responding to treatment.

January 2004