Dear Molecular Imaging Insider,
Can diagnostic-quality PET images for detecting breast cancer be produced with only 10% of the conventional FDG dose? It's possible using a time-of-flight (TOF) imaging technique with PET/MRI, according to a new study.
Researchers from the U.S., Canada, and Switzerland used as little as 10% of the full FDG dose with TOF PET/MRI to achieve adequate image quality, sharpness, noise, and lesion detectability. With this approach, the radiation burden for patients would be less than that of a single digital mammogram. How did they do it? Get all of the details in this Insider Exclusive.
PET/MRI also could very well provide all the answers clinicians need to evaluate and direct treatment for patients with rectal cancer, according to a trio of studies presented last week at RSNA 2018. Researchers from Brazil found that the hybrid modality outperformed more conventional imaging options by detecting more lesions and better assessing the spread of disease, in addition to offering "tolerable scan times" for patients.
In other news, by performing resting-state myocardial perfusion imaging with cardiac FDG-PET before revascularization, clinicians can better assess the benefits of that procedure and predict near-term outcomes for patients with coronary artery disease and left ventricular dysfunction, according to researchers from India.
To combat poor image results from patient motion in cardiac PET scans, researchers from the U.S. and U.K. have developed an automated retrospective image reconstruction method. The so-called gross patient motion correction approach significantly increased maximum standardized uptake value and tumor-to-background ratio, leading to an upgrade of several lesions.
Finally, artificial intelligence (AI) continues to carve a niche in radiology. By learning to identify the metabolic patterns of Alzheimer's disease, a deep-learning algorithm for brain FDG-PET studies can accurately predict the onset of this devastating disease years before a clinical diagnosis is made, according to a recent study.
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