High (18)F-fluorodeoxyglucose uptake in cardiac tumor: A case report

BACKGROUND: Cardiac tumors, especially malignant, are rare but aggressive tumors that mostly arise from the mesenchymal cells and represent a challenging diagnosis for clinicians. Recently, fluorine-18-fluorodiography positron emission tomography and computed tomography ((18)F-FDG PET/CT) is an increasingly popular new technique with diagnosis of tumor. METHODS: We report a case of a right heart tumor showing intense uptake of (18)F-fluorodeoxyglucose ((18)F-FDG) on position emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) imaging. We discuss the clinical course and diagnostic evaluations. RESULTS: The maximal standardized uptake values (SUV(max)) for the cardiac and metastatic lesion were 17.2 and 12.9, respectively. CONCLUSION: (18)F-FDG PET/CT imaging, which enables both morphological characterization and visualization of tumor metabolism, may be an effective and feasible noninvasive method for the diagnosis of malignant cardiac tumors.