Pain is probably the most common symptom and sensation of a disease, and a big individual and socioeconomic challenge. Diagnostic tools are limited and do not result in clear mechanism-based insight into the etiology of the individual pain. One shortcoming is that nearly all diagnostic approaches rely on the communication with the patient about the location, the presentation and the intensity of pain. Therefore, a method to visualize the origin of pain and to make its intensity objectively measureable is an urgent medical need. It is also a prerequisite for patient stratification for the development and testing of novel therapeutic drugs. PET-tracers are widely used as diagnostic and therapeutic tools in several types of cancer, besides other applications of visualization in various medical indications. However, there are so far only few reports, which utilize PET-tracer and PET-scan for the detection of pain (see references). The inventors have provided proof that an established PET-tracer for use in cancer can be also utilized for the detection of pain as a second medical application. They found this tracer to be enriched at the peripheral site of pain (see figure). The amount of tracer-enrichment strongly correlated with the measured change in pain sensitivity.