Scans may be able to tell in days if chemo works

This image, provided by The University of Wisconsin, Section of Hematology & Medical Oncology and taken from a FLT-PET scan of a 47-year old woman, shows that leukemia present in the bone marrow before treatment, left, persisted after chemotherapy, right.NEW YORK - When Mike Stevens learned his lungs were riddled with cancer, it took only a week to start chemotherapy — but six weeks to find out if it was doing any good.

"You're going through all this suffering and stuff and you want to know, am I going to survive? Is this stuff working?" said Stevens, 48, of La Jolla, Calif. "Your whole life is in sort of a limbo."

Doctors typically must wait weeks or months to see if a treatment is shrinking tumors or at least halting their growth. But researchers are exploring a new use for medical imaging that could shorten the stay in purgatory, possibly revealing within a few days whether chemo is working.