High 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose uptake in cardiac tumor

BACKGROUND Cardiac tumors, especially malignant, are rare but aggressive tumors that mostly arise from the mesenchymal cells and represent a challenging diagnosis for clinicians. Recently, fluorine-18-fluorodiography positron emission tomography and computed tomography (F-FDG PET/CT) is an increasingly popular new technique with diagnosis of tumor. METHODS We report a case of a right heart tumor showing intense uptake of F-fluorodeoxyglucose (F-FDG) on position emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) imaging. We discuss the clinical course and diagnostic evaluations. RESULTS The maximal standardized uptake values (SUVmax) for the cardiac and metastatic lesion were 17.2 and 12.9, respectively. CONCLUSION F-FDG PET/CT imaging, which enables both morphological characterization and visualization of tumor metabolism, may be an effective and feasible noninvasive method for the diagnosis of malignant cardiac tumors.