Role of F-18 FDG PET/CT imaging in the diagnosis of paraneoplastic neurological syndromes*

Paraneoplastic neurological syndromes (PNS) is a series of rare neurologic disorders which happen with an underlying malignancy. It has various clinical symptoms proceding to the diagnosis of tumors. Although the abnormality of anti-neuronal antibodies is suggestive of PNS and tumors, there exist many false positive and false negative cases. The diagnosis of PNS is usually a challenge in clinic. Positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) imaging is an anatomical and functional fusion imaging method, which provides the whole-body information by single scan. Fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) PET/CT imaging can not only detect potential malignant lesions in the whole body, but also assess functional abnormality in the brain. In this review, the mechanism, clinical manifestation, diagnostic procedure and the recent progress of the utility of FDG PET/CT in PNS are introduced respectively.