The Effectiveness of 18F-fluorocholine Positron Emission Tomography (PET) in Detecting, Staging and Following-up Prostate Cancer

Choline is one of the components of phosphatidylcholine, an essential element of phospholipids in the cell membrane. Some malignant cells show their ability to actively incorporate choline to produce phosphocholine and phosphatidylcholine to facilitate tumor cell duplication. The efficacy of 18F-fluorocholine (18F-FCH) for localizing primary or metastatic prostate cancer has been recently reported in limited studies. This study will be conducted to delineate the effectiveness of 18F-FCH PET in (1) differentiating benign prostate hypertrophy (BPH) from prostate cancer, (2) staging prostate cancer, (3) following-up patients with prostate cancer after initial curative therapy.