PET Imaging of Oral Cavity and Oropharyngeal Cancers.

Fluorine-18 fluorodeoxyglucose PET/computed tomography (18F-FDG PET/CT) plays an important role in the staging, treatment planning, treatment response assessment, detecting recurrent disease, and predicting prognosis in patients with oral cavity and oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma. PET/CT has advantage especially in the detection of nodal, distant metastatic disease and second primary malignancy. PET/MR provides superior soft tissue contrast while decreasing radiation exposure, which is advantageous in evaluation of the primary tumor.