Dr. Morris Discusses PET Imaging in Prostate Cancer

Michael J. Morris, MD, medical oncologist, Genitourinary Oncology Service, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, discusses the use of PET imaging for patients with prostate cancer.

One challenge of metastatic prostate cancer is that the disease localizes to the bone primarily. Visualizing metastatic disease in the bone is difficult with standard measures because it's impossible to measure the cancer inside of a reactive bone and hard to see if the patient is responding to therapy.

PET imaging, Morris says, has the potential to directly image the cancer, penetrate the bone, and get a direct assessment of a cancer's activity before or during treatment. Hopefully the use of PET imaging can help to develop prognostic methods and new response measures.