Progress in medical imaging of lymphoma and Hodgkin's disease

Abstract

Noninvasive imaging methods are the cornerstone of the conventional staging of patients with Hodgkin's disease and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Gallium-67 scintigraphy has become an important and essential imaging method, especially in the restaging for assessment of residual masses in patients with lymphoma. Magnetic resonance imaging will be used in the future for confirmation of suspect local lesions. Imaging of lymphoma patients with somatostatin receptor scintigraphy will remain a secondary imaging method, which will not be as routine. Positron emission tomography with 18-F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) has made the greatest steps forward and offers, when whole-body FDG-PET is used, the advantage that the entire body of the patient can be imaged. Nodal, extranodal, and bone marrow involvement have been imaged by FDG-PET with great sensitivity and specificity. Perhaps in the future, staging laparotomy for exact staging of lymphoma patients will be unnecessary, and patients will be staged solely with noninvasive staging methods.