The U.S. National Institutes of Health's (NIH) National Cancer Institute has awarded a five-year research project grant to the Universities of Iowa, Pennsylvania, and Washington to identify harmonized PET/CT reconstruction parameters for use in clinical trials, according to the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI).
In the standard clinical environment, PET/CT operators are free to reconstruct images according to their own protocols. However, during a clinical trial, a site will be able to generate harmonized images by simply using the identified clinical-trial-specific reconstruction parameters. This will help address the lack of standardization among images in multicenter trials.
SNMMI's Clinical Trials Network will serve as an administrative coordinating body for the Image Reconstruction Harmonization Grant, the organization said.
Co-principle investigators for the grant include Paul Kinahan, PhD, professor of radiology at the University of Washington, and Joel Karp, PhD, professor of radiology at the University of Pennsylvania. Physicists and engineers from GE Healthcare, Philips Healthcare, and Siemens Healthcare -- the three companies that currently manufacture PET/CT scanners -- will participate in the research as industry co-investigators, SNMMI said.
