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EXPLORER, which is supposed to be the first medical imaging scanner capable of capturing a 3-D image of the entire human body at once, has produced the first scans.
An original idea from scientists at Davis University, Simon Cherry and Ramsey Badawi, EXPLORER is a combined scanner of positron emission tomography (PET) and X-ray computed tomography (CT), able to simultaneously visualize the whole body.
Because the machine captures radiation much more efficiently than other scanners, EXPLORER can produce an image in just one second and, over time, produce movies that can track specially labeled drugs as they move around. the whole body.
Developers expect technology to have countless applications, from improving diagnostics to tracking disease progression to finding new drug treatments.
The first images of human scans using the new device will be presented at the next meeting of the North American Radiological Society, to be held November 24 in Chicago.
The scanner was developed in partnership with United Imaging Healthcare (UIH), based in Shanghai, who built the system on the basis of its latest technology platform and will eventually manufacture the devices for the broader healthcare market. .
Cherry, a professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of California at Davis, Cherry, said, "Even though I had imagined what the images would look like for years, nothing prepared me for the incredible detail that we could see on this first scan.
"While there is still a lot of careful analysis to do, I think we already know that EXPLORER delivers pretty much what we promised.
The Director of Nuclear Medicine at UC Davis Health and the Vice President of Research of the Department of Radiology, Mr. Badawi, was stunned when he saw the first images acquired in collaboration with UIH and the Department of Medicine. nuclear Zhongshan Hospital of Shanghai.
Badawi said, "The level of detail was incredible, especially when the reconstruction method was optimized.
"We've seen features you do not see about normal PET scans. And the dynamic sequence showing the radiotracer moving around the body in three dimensions over time was, frankly, disconcerting. There is no other device capable of obtaining such data in humans, so this is really a novelty. "
Badawi and Cherry conceptualized the body scanner 13 years ago. Their idea was launched in 2011 with a $ 1.5 million grant from the National Cancer Institute, which allowed them to build a large consortium of researchers and other collaborators. And that got a huge boost in 2015 with a $ 15.5 million grant from the NIH. The funding allowed them to team up with a commercial partner and build the first EXPLORER scanner.
Cherry said expecting EXPLORER to have a profound impact on clinical research and patient care, as it makes it possible to obtain diagnostic PETs of superior quality to those that do not. has never been possible. EXPLORER also scans up to 40 times faster than current PET scans and can produce a full-body diagnostic scan in just 20-30 seconds.
EXPLORER can also scan with a radiation dose up to 40 times lower than that of a current PET scanner, opening up new avenues of research and making it possible to carry out numerous repeated studies on an individual, or considerably reducing the dose in patients. pediatric studies, in which cumulative control The radiation dose is particularly important.
Cherry said: "The trade-off between image quality, acquisition time, and dose of radiation injected will vary by application, but in any case, we can scan better, faster, or better. radiation dose less, or a combination of these elements. "
For the first time, an imaging scanner will be able to simultaneously assess what is happening in all organs and tissues of the body. For example, it could quantitatively measure blood flow or how the body absorbs glucose throughout the body. Researchers are considering using CT to study cancer that has spread beyond a tumor site, inflammation, infection, immunological or metabolic disorders, and many other diseases.
UC Davis is working closely with UIH to have the first system delivered and installed at the EXPLORER imaging center in a leased space in Sacramento, and researchers hope to be able to launch patient research and imaging projects to help explore next June. The UC Davis team is also working closely with Hongcheng Shi, director of nuclear medicine at Zhongshan Hospital in Shanghai, to continue and expand the field of early human studies on CT.
Cherry said, "I do not think we'll see a number of EXPLORER systems in the world soon.
"But it depends on the demonstration of the benefits of the system, both clinically and for research. Our goal now is to plan studies that will show how EXPLORER will benefit our patients and contribute to our knowledge of the human body as a whole, whether it is about his health or his illness. "
Source: Press release of the company
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