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Artifactual Spinal Metastases Imaged by PET/CT: A Case Report

Department of Diagnostic Radiology, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut

A 55-y-old patient with multiple myeloma presented for restaging after chemotherapy and radiation. The patient had undergone vertebroplasty of multiple thoracic vertebrae because of painful compression fractures. The ¹⁸F-FDG PET images showed increased activity at the T8 and T10–T12 vertebral bodies. Comparison of the attenuation-corrected and non–attenuation-corrected images demonstrated that the activity was due to an artifact of attenuation correction. The CT scan correlated the sites of vertebroplasty to the 4 foci of increased uptake of ¹⁸F-FDG. The increasing use of vertebroplasty for malignant spinal fractures warrants vigilance for this artifact.

Key Words: PET; CT; myeloma; vertebroplasty; artifact