High-resolution 18F-FDG PET with MRI for monitoring response to treatment in rheumatoid arthritis

18F-FDG and 18F-NaF PET/CT demonstrate coupling of inflammation and accelerated bone turnover in rheumatoid arthritis

“…The issue is one of the major limitations of PET/CT in small joint analysis. Recent pilot studies have shown that spatial resolution of PET image in hand small joints is improved by use of dedicated PET imaging devices [34], or high-resolution PET with MRI scanner [40].…”

High-resolution18F-FDG PET/CT for assessing disease activity in rheumatoid and psoriatic arthritis: findings of a prospective pilot study

“…Three areas of clinical applications of such systems could be considered: (i) early disease activity assessment and staging, owing to their ability to quantify disease activity in small joints; (ii) differential diagnosis, where radiotracer uptake patterns could reveal fundamentally different pathologies and hence allow improved therapeutic selection; and (iii) early monitoring of response to therapy, where high-resolution PET/CT could provide more sensitive and robust surrogate end points for the early assessment of arthritic drug efficacy. 35 Given that the inflammatory proliferative cascade in RA and PsA involves cellular activation, hypoxia, angiogenesis, osteoclastic and osteoblastic activity, 36 there is potential to employ targeted radiotracers 37 with high-resolution systems to further our ability to track disease.…”

Monitoring rheumatoid arthritis

“…It will be important to compare SAMIS with radiographic scoring in the future. MRI may also be combined with PET-CT scanning to provide novel imaging modalities [37].…”