Speaker
Description
Positron emission tomography (PET) is an essential modality for clinical diagnosis and biomedical research. While the prohibitive initial cost of total-body PET (TB-PET) systems often presents a significant barrier for low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), these systems offer overwhelming advantages over conventional PET scanners. By providing an extended axial field of view (AFOV), TB-PET enables simultaneous multi-organ dynamic imaging. More importantly for resource-limited settings, the ultra-high sensitivity of TB-PET allows for ultra-low injected tracer doses, ultra-fast scanning speeds, and exceptionally high patient throughput. These operational efficiencies can effectively offset the high capital investment by maximizing daily scan volumes and alleviating tracer supply constraints.
We have developed a high-performance TB-PET system featuring a massive 200 cm AFOV to fully leverage these advantages. The current baseline system employs 2 mm LYSO crystal pixels and integrates light-sharing windows to enable precise depth-of-interaction (DOI) estimation. Performance evaluations demonstrated an outstanding central sensitivity of 180.34 cps/kBq and a coincidence timing resolution of approximately 320 ps. Phantom studies confirmed the system's ability to clearly resolve 2 mm structures and perform high-fidelity dynamic whole-body imaging.
To further promote the accessibility of this technology in LMICs, targeted hardware cost reductions are essential. For instance, we have successfully developed and validated a low-cost BGO-DOI-PET detector in a preclinical animal system. Migrating this proven Bismuth Germanate (BGO) DOI technology into the human TB-PET architecture can drastically reduce expensive detector material costs while maintaining the critical DOI capability needed to mitigate parallax errors across the extended AFOV.
In conclusion, the integration of cost-effective BGO-DOI detectors into a high-efficiency TB-PET framework provides a highly translatable and economically viable solution. This strategic adaptation holds immense potential to democratize advanced multi-organ molecular imaging and improve healthcare equity in LMICs.
| Track | Deployment of Nuclear Medicine in LMICs: Enabling Technologies |
|---|---|
| Presentation type | Oral |