[State of the art in nuclear imaging for the diagnosis of bone metastases]

Cancers prone to spread to bone include prostate, lung, kidney, breast and thyroid cancers. While bone scanner has been widely used in the past decades, PET-based imaging modalities are increasingly used. Current modalities of PET imaging of bone metastases include tumor and inflammatory targeting with FDG-PET, bone imaging with NaF-PET, and direct cancer-specific markers such as FDOPA-PET or PET using choline. The cancer-specific metastatic patterns and the relative prognosis conferred by osseous metastases (versus visceral metastases) may determine the need for bone scan, FDG-PET for the detection of bone metastases. Because some cancers have a mixed skeletal and visceral, cocktails PET radiopharmaceuticals may also be discussed in the future. The cancer-specific context and performances of bone scan and PET imaging are discussed.