Background: A variety of therapeutic approaches are employed to treat patients suffering from breast cancer. Likewise, a broad spectrum of imaging ligands has been introduced for non-invasive PET/CT imaging to enable comprehensive tumor characterization and more accurate response evaluation.
Summary: In recent years, novel radioactively labelled ligands have been developed for PET/CT imaging in metastatic breast cancer. One promising tracer is [18F]fluoroestradiol, which was recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration. It can be used for a whole-body assessment of estrogen receptor status. Another radionuclide currently under development is [68Ga]Ga-FAPI. In addition to new radionuclides, the field of application for existing tracers like [18F]fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) were broadened. It has been shown that an early therapeutic response to various therapies can be detected by [18F]FDG PET/CT, which leads to early treatment optimization.
Key Message: In this review, we highlighted new tracers and applications of PET/CT imaging as well as therapeutic approaches in patients with advanced breast cancer. Furthermore, we give an outlook on the application of artificial intelligence, immunoPET and liquid biopsy.
Prediction of therapy response in bone-predominant metastatic breast cancer: comparison of [18F] fluorodeoxyglucose and [18F]-fluoride PET/CT with whole-body MRI with diffusion-weighted imaging