[(18)F]FET PET enables histopathology-validated detection of non-contrast-enhancing glioblastoma.

In a histopathology-validated cohort of 61 IDH-wildtype glioblastoma patients (472 tissue samples), [18F]FET PET detects non-contrast-enhancing tumor tissue far better than CE-MRI (91.2% vs 52.6% sensitivity).

• Why it matters: Contrast-enhanced MRI can miss metabolically active glioblastoma outside blood-brain barrier disruption, leaving uncertainty for biopsy, resection, and radiotherapy targeting.
• What they did: The study compared [18F]FET PET with contrast-enhanced MRI against histopathology across newly diagnosed and recurrent disease, and across resection and biopsy tissue.
• The result: In MRI non-enhancing regions, [18F]FET PET maintained high reliability with a positive predictive value of 98.3%, supporting its use to reveal MRI-occult tumor burden.

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