18F-FDG PET/CT assessment of histopathologically confirmed mediastinal lymph nodes in non-small cell lung cancer using a penalised likelihood reconstruction

Abstract

• Penalised likelihood PET reconstruction was applied for assessing mediastinal nodes in NSCLC. • The new reconstruction generated significant increases in signal-to-background, signal-to-noise and SUVmax. • This led to an improvement in visual sensitivity using the new algorithm. • Higher SUV _max thresholds may be appropriate for semi-quantitative analyses with penalised likelihood.