Evaluation of Quantitative PET/CT Usage for Cancer Treatment

Sammanfattning: Cancer is a disease affecting practically the entire society in one way or another. A great effort is made to find a cure and positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) has recently become a vital part to achieve this goal. The reason for this is because PET/CT provides an opportunity to obtain more tumor information than other techniques, which in turn could improve cancer treatments and increase the survival rate. This thesis work examined how PET/CT is utilized for cancer treatment in Sweden and how the workflow for the examination can be simplified and improved. This was initially achieved by conducting a literature study where articles and research describing PET/CT and/or cancer treatment both in Sweden and in the world were investigated. Questions for interviews and a questionnaire were constructed based on this information. The result from the interviews and the questionnaire contained data regarding PET/CT and oncology, and how the physicians wish to utilize PET/CT images for cancer treatment in the future. This information was compiled and features were selected to be implemented in a prototype for a user interface for examining PET/CT images. The information will hopefully contribute to an improvement of the everyday life of the physicians and to the PET/CT images being analyzed more time efficiently. This can in turn shorten the investigation part of a cancer treatment and save more lives. It could be concluded that PET/CT has great potential within the oncology area. The semi-quantitative uptake metric called standardized uptake value (SUV) could for example be developed further and its usage could be increased due to the interest in PET/CT. The disbelief in changes within the health care system was also clear and as a consequence it is vital to design products that are adjustable and have a high usability.