Nuclear medicine at the University Hospital Zurich has long standing experience in PET-CT. In fact, the world’s first clinical PET-CT system was installed here in March 2001. At present we operate 2 PET-CT scanners and perform close to 5’000 PET-CT examinations a year of which around 1’000 using intravenous contrast enhanced CT and of which approximately 500 are research scans. The program provides state-of-the-art training in PET-CT qualifying MDs - who have successfully completed the program - as competent readers of PET-CT according to the guidelines deemed appropriate by various Nuclear Medicine bodies (consistent with guidelines of the Swiss Society for Nuclear Medicine and in accordance with guidelines published in the Journal of Nuclear Medicine (1)). There are four distinct programs, certified by UEMS and listed below. With this participants can get European continuing education credits for their participation. 

Since 2003 we run a much acclaimed 2½ day basic course in PET-CT imaging, which has been attended by > 150 participants from Sydney to Los Angeles and Scandinavia to South America. The basic and the advanced PET-CT course focus mainly on the application of PET-CT in oncology. The basic course primarily discusses FDG-PET-CT applications while the advanced course takes a look at tracers other than FDG and at the relative merits of PET-CT compared to CT and MRI.

In 2007 Nuclear Medicine at USZ started to host a fellowship program, where fellows read 300+ PET-CT cases per month. This program by now has seen > 40 fellows. PET-CT reading competence is gained by independently analyzing and discussing PET-CT cases from daily routine with our competent staff. While full competence in PET and CT imaging can only be gained by resident training in Nuclear Medicine and Radiology, respectively, the aim is to provide to the participating fellows a solid foundation on how interpret PET-CT data. Consistent with our PET-CT philosophy the training focuses on analyzing low dose CT examinations without intravenous contrast agents. Nevertheless, participants will also be exposed to intravenous contrast enhanced PET-CT studies.

As a new addition, we offer a fellowship in cardiac SPECT, CT and PET and hybrid imaging, which aims at teaching the participants how to optimally use these techniques and understand when which technique should be used. The fellowship relies heavily on reporting on daily routine cases and also comprises a lecture series.

A more detailed description of our educational offers is found under the links below.

Our know-how has been made available to the clinical community through a book (2), which appeared at the end of 2006 in his 2nd edition.