Positron Emission Tomography (PET) is a well-established imaging technique for in vivo molecular imaging. In this review after a brief history of PET there are presented its physical principles and the technology that has been developed for bringing PET from a bench experiment to a clinical indispensable instrument. The limitations and performance of the PET tomographs are discussed, both as for the hardware and software aspects. The status of art of clinical, preclinical and hybrid scanners (i.e., PET/CT and PET/MR) is reported. Finally the actual trend and the recent and future technological developments are fully illustrated. PAC S 87.57.uk - Positron emission tomography (PET). PAC S 87.57.-s - Medical imaging. PAC S 87.57.nf - Reconstruction.