SU-E-I-98: PET/CT's Most-Cited 50 Articles since 2000: A Bibliometric Analysis of Classics.

PURPOSE

Despite its relatively recent introduction to clinical practice, PET/CT has gained wide acceptance both in diagnostic and therapeutic applications. Scientific publication in PET/CT has also experienced significant development since its introduction. Bibliometric analyses allow an understanding of how this publication trend has developed at an aggregated level. Citation analysis is one of the most widely used bibliometric tools of scientometrics. Analysis of classics, defined as an articles with 100 or more citations, is common in the biomedical sciences as it reflects an article's influence in its professional and scientific community. Our objective was to identify the 50 most frequently cited classic articles in PET/CT in the past 10 years.

METHODS

The 50 most-cited PET/CT articles were identified by searching ISI's Web of Knowledge and Pubmed databases for all related publications from 2000 through 2010. Articles were evaluated for several characteristics such as author(s), institution, country of origin, publication year, type, and number of citations. An unadjusted categorical analysis was performed to compare all articles published in the search period.

RESULTS

The search yielded a cumulative total of 22,554 entries for the publication period, of which 15,943 were original research articles. The 50 most-cited articles were identified from the latter sum and selected out of 73 classics. The number of citations for the top 50 classics ranged from 114 to 700. PET/CT classics appeared in three general and 12 core journals. The majority of the classics were in oncologic applications of PET/CT (62%). Articles related to diagnostic topics were 6%. The rest were focused on physics and instrumentation 24% and other basic sciences 16%.

CONCLUSIONS

Despite its relatively short history PET/CT accumulated 73 classic articles in a decade. Such information is of importance to researchers and those who wish to study the scientific development in the field.