Dear Molecular Imaging Insider,
The 2019 RSNA annual meeting is in the history books with another year of groundbreaking research from around the world.
Among the scientific presentations was one from German researchers who compared FDG-PET/MRI against MRI alone and ultrasound for the accurate staging of breast cancer. How well did the hybrid modality perform against its radiological peers? Read more in this edition's Insider Exclusive.
In other news from RSNA 2019, the combination of gallium-68 DOTATATE PET and MRI can greatly improve the assessment of how well patients with meningiomas respond to surgery and/or radiation treatment. The dynamic hybrid modality was instrumental in the accurate assessment of a majority of malignant recurrent and progressive lesions, improved the characterization of disease, and confirmed parenchymal and osseous invasion in a disease that carries with it a poor prognosis.
In other news, a novel PET imaging technique has uncovered high levels of ischemia in patients within the first 24 hours after a traumatic brain injury (TBI), but it also showed the condition begins to subside over the next 10 days. European researchers used oxygen-15 (O-15) PET to measure cerebral blood flow, oxygenation, ischemic brain volume, and other related factors in nearly 70 patients with TBI and came away with three key findings, one of which is O-15 PET's utility to detect ischemia soon after a TBI.
PET/MRI scans also show middle-aged adults with high vascular risk factors have less whole-brain volume by the time they reach their late 60s, but their lifestyle and physical characteristics do not influence beta-amyloid accumulation. The results confirm the need for a concerted reduction in vascular risk factors in middle age.
Finally, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have published the first clinical images acquired using the prototype PennPET Explorer, the second of two large axial field-of-view whole-body PET imagers developed by the U.S.-based Explorer Consortium.
Be sure to stay in touch with the Molecular Imaging Community on a daily basis for the latest in new research and news from around the world.
