Positron emission tomography in the COVID-19 pandemic era

Authors

Chentao Jin
Xiaoyun Luo
Shufang Qian
Kai Zhang
Yuanxue Gao
Rui Zhou
Peili Cen
Zhoujiao Xu
Hong Zhang
Mei Tian

Publication Date

11-1-2021

Journal

European Journal of Nuclear Medicine Molecular Imaging

Abstract

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has become a major public health problem worldwide since its outbreak in 2019. Currently, the spread of COVID-19 is far from over, and various complications have roused increasing awareness of the public, calling for novel techniques to aid at diagnosis and treatment. Based on the principle of molecular imaging, positron emission tomography (PET) is expected to offer pathophysiological alternations of COVID-19 in the molecular/cellular perspectives and facilitate the clinical management of patients. A number of PET-related cases and research have been reported on COVID-19 over the past one year. This article reviews the current studies of PET in the diagnosis and treatment of COVID-19, and discusses potential applications of PET in the development of management strategy for COVID-19 patients in the pandemic era.

Keywords

COVID-19, Humans, Pandemics, Positron-Emission Tomography, SARS-CoV-2, Tomography, X-Ray Computed