The soup is back from a Holiday break with our PET/CT edition! Read on to have your PET/CT acronyms decoded and defined.

CT scanner phraseology is the focus of this week's installment of our ongoing series. Dig into the following and expand your radiology vocabulary!

Have you ever sat in a meeting or convention and felt like you were listening in on a texting conversation between two 14 year-old girls?  Sure, every field has their acronyms and shortened verbiage, but is it really more efficient if you have to run back to your office after the meeting to Google what HICCUP stands for and why there’s not two O’s in SMOG when it clearly stands for the School of Mathmagitional Occupologication Orbits and Geographonomy? 

We’re here to help.  No more nodding along at who, when, and where that convention is or wondering when subtraction could be “digital”!  Over the next few weeks, we’ll be breaking down common acronyms and phrases within the imaging segment.  

As always, if you know of a toughie that stumped you for your first 15 years in imaging, please let us know and we’ll include it so others can learn and be able to throw their hands in the air like front-row kindergartners any time it gets brought up. 

Since writing a version of this article originally in October 2011, I am still asked on a weekly basis, "How much does a PET/CT cost?" So it’s time for an update! The answer still depends on a number of things, but the single most determinative factor is the number of slices the CT has. 

If you can’t find a PET/CT in a mobile unit that was built that way at the factory, don’t worry! There are still PET/CT options available that adapt well from fixed locations to mobile units. But before you begin shopping around on all the units we’re about to discuss, there are some things you should figure out in advance:

As you investigate the PET/CT market, you’re going to hear a good deal of name-dropping: manufacturers, models, variants and revisions of those models, and so on. Amidst all of that, the name “Siemens Biograph Duo” is likely to slip from a colleague’s lips or appear in pleasant blue letters somewhere on your Google results page.

The GE Discovery family of PET/CTs is like a pack of vicious velociraptors; quick, quiet, and hunting down anatomical anomalies like so many billionaires’ grandchildren cowering behind the darkened countertops of an industrial kitchen.

If you're anything like me, you woke up this morning with one burning question on your mind: How am I gonna get the most out of my PET scanner or PET/CT?

Before I reveal how to make a Siemens Biograph 16 into a Mobile PET/CT, let me first explain why everyone else will tell you, "It just can’t be done."