Standardized 18F-FDG PET-CT Imaging Protocol

After fasting for a minimum of 8 h and resting for 10 min in a quiet room, patients received an intravenous dose of approximately 5 MBq/kg of ¹⁸F-FDG, followed by a 60-min uptake period. All patients had a serum glucose level less than 120 mg/dL at the time of injection. All ¹⁸F-FDG PET-CT examinations were performed on the Discovery STE scanner (GE Healthcare, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA) or the Biograph Vision scanner (Siemens Medical Solutions, Erlangen, Germany). Helical low dose, non-contrast CT images (tube voltage 100 kVp, current intensity 62 mAs, slice thickness 3.75 mm) were obtained for attenuation correction, similar to other groups [18 (link), 19 (link)]. PET images were acquired in three-dimensional mode and reconstructed to 128 × 128 image matrices using an iterative algorithm. Images were sent to our institution’s picture archiving and communications system (Sectra PACS, Sectra Medical, Linkoping, Sweden).