Clinical Diagnosis of Bacterial Infection via FDG-PET Imaging

The key challenge in the treatment of bacterial infection is rapid identification of bacteremia at an early stage of the diseases. Currently available imaging systems such as computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can only detect bacterial infection after they have become systemic or have caused significant anatomical tissue damage, and at this stage infection are challenging to treat due to the high bacterial burden. To this day positron emission tomography (PET) imaging has showed the great potential for improving the diagnosis of bacterial infection because of the high sensitivity of PET radionuclides, capability of detecting molecular biology in details (even prior to anatomic change). Fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) PET has been developed for bacterial imaging with incredible success. Whole body PET imaging with FDG for the diagnosis of bacterial infection and monitoring response to treatment has been well established. FDG-PET will not only help to accelerate the diagnosis of infection but improve the bacterial treatment. In this review, we focus on FDG-PET imaging for diagnosing bacterial infection in the clinic.