Peroperative Assessment of Malignancies of the Head and Neck Using High-resolution 18F-FDG-PET/CT

"Included patients are given a single weight-dependent activity of 18F-FDG at the department of Nuclear Medicine. After administration, patients are brought to the operating room where standard of care surgical removal of the malignancy is performed.~The resected specimen(s) are brought to the imaging lab and scanned using a preclinical and/or a dedicated specimen PET/CT device. Following PET/CT imaging, the specimen is brought to the department of pathology, where it is sliced. Some of these slices are then rescanned using the preclinical PET/CT device. Moreover, frozen sections are made from one of these slices with macroscopically visible malignant tissue and placed on an autoradiograph overnight. Finally, the imaging results are then correlated to the results found during histopathological analysis of the specimens."