Utility of metabolic heterogeneity factor in differentiating malignant versus benign parotid uptake on F FDG PET-CT.

Differentiation of benign and malignant parotid uptake on Fluorine 18 Fluro-Deoxy-Glucose Positron Emission Tomography-Computed Tomography (F FDG PET-CT) is of paramount importance due to the poor prognosis of the later but usual quantitative measures such as standardized uptake value (SUV) are not reliable for this purpose. Metabolic heterogeneity, being a characteristic of malignant tumors, would potentially be able to make this distinction. In this study, seventy-one FDG-avid parotid lesions were retrospectively separated histologically into benign and malignant groups.