Dear AuntMinnie.com member,
Can brain PET imaging be performed without the use of head restraints? A Japanese team believes so. The group recently tested an experimental system that corrected head motion when they induced cough in patients during scans.
The findings offer new insights into brain activity in dysphagic patients with impaired cough reflexes, the authors suggested. Click here for the story.
In a similar technological development, a team at the New York State Psychiatric Institute has tested a newly developed portable PET scanner that measures brain glucose metabolism based on F-18 FDG radiotracer uptake comparably to that of a standard PET scanner.
In other news, standard F-18 FDG-PET/CT imaging recently revealed for the first time that brain hypometabolism and hypermetabolism may have different effects on cognition in patients with dementia with Lewy bodies.
In addition, FAPI-PET radiotracers continue to show their stripes. We covered a recent follow-up study by Chinese researchers indicating that gallium-68 FAPI-04 uptake in joints may be a biomarker for early response to rheumatoid arthritis treatment.
Meanwhile, a January 4 article in the Journal of Nuclear Medicine suggests that F-18 FAPI-04 radiotracer outperforms F-18 FDG in identifying primary tumors, lymph node metastasis, and distant metastases in patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC).
Here are a few other stories we posted that highlight the value of PET imaging:
- According to a group at University Hospital Brno in Brno, Czechia, PET/MRI imaging shows promise in diagnosing fevers or inflammation of unknown origin and may have advantages over PET/CT.
- PET/CT scans have the potential to predict brain metastasis in melanoma patients, according to a study published December 26 in Cancers.
- A team in Taiyuan, China, found that F-18 FDG-PET/CT has significant advantages over conventional methods for lesion detection and staging in patients with natural killer/T-cell lymphoma.
We're also highlighting research designed to help oncology clinicians minimize false interpretations in PET/CT imaging in patients who have received recent COVID-19 vaccines. The study is the first to examine systemic response changes in correlation to time after COVID-19 vaccination using three different vaccines.
Finally, while lymphoscintigraphy is recommended for diagnosing lymphedema, we reported on a study led by a team at Tufts Medical Center in Boston that found the procedure is seldom used in real-world settings in the U.S.
For more molecular imaging news, be sure to check in regularly with our Molecular Imaging Community.
