Clinical PET/CT is a well-known useful tool for the in vivo noninvasive quantitative imaging of physiologic and pathologic processes [1]. Actually, the key role of PET/CT in cancer staging and therapeutic responses to personalized treatments is well established; it is an essential imaging modality not only in oncology but also in neuroscience and in all the applications of molecular imaging. In recent years, there have been multiple advances in PET/CT scanners: new hardware, software, and acquisition methods to improve image quality [2]. Nevertheless, till now PET detectors have been mainly based on photomultiplier tubes (PMT), which have well-known advantages but also several limitations that affect, in particular, small lesions detection [3]. The introduction of digital detectors in PET/CT scanners may represent an important improvement in this diagnostic technology [4].In this issue of EJNMMI, Lopez-Mora et al.[5] present a step forward in this field, comparing image quality and lesion detection capability between a digital (d) and an analog (a) PET/CT system in 100 patients with oncologic diseases who were prospectively included in this study. The patients consecutively underwent a single day, dual imaging protocol (d and aPET/CT) after a i.v. injection of either FDG or fluorocholine. The first PET/CT was performed 60 min after the i.v. injection of the radiopharmaceutical, and the second imaging dataset was acquired with a mean time delay of 50 ± 14 min. In the patients referred for an initial assessment (n = 58), the dPET/CT was performed first, while in the patients who were evaluated for therapy monitoring, the aPET/CT was firstly acquired. Three nuclear medicine physicians evaluated image quality using a 4-point scale (−1, poor to 2, excellent) and detection capability by counting the number of lesions with increased uptake of the radiopharmaceutical. In 54% of patients, dPET/CT allowed a better image quality than aPET/ CT; in the remaining 46 patients, image quality did not significantly differ between both devices. Regarding lesion detection capability, dPET/CT was able to visualize lesions in three patients in whom the a system resulted negative; moreover, in 19 out of 80 cases which were positive at aPET/CT imaging, the dPET/CT detected more lesions. In these 22 patients, all the lesions visualized only by means of the dPET/CT were < 1 cm in size: eight were in the lungs, eight in lymph-nodes, six in the liver, four in bones, and one in seminal vesicles, in the breasts and in the skin, respectively. It is worth noting that dPET/CT changed staging in 32% of these patients (7 out of 22).In the same group of 100 oncological patients, another recent study was conducted to assess whether dPET/CT impact on the quantification of SUVmax in target lesions (the most metabolically active in each case) and in reference regions (liver and mediastinal blood pool) in comparison to aPET/CT [6]. The findings of this paper indicate that SUVmax of the target lesions and mediastinal blood pool measured by the d system w...