Speaker
Description
The Walk-Through (WT) PET-CT system is designed to significantly improve patient throughput, comfort, and cost-efficiency in clinical environments. Conventional tomographic imaging systems such as PET and CT scanners are limited by large physical footprints and inefficiencies in patient handling, which have become the primary bottleneck for throughput despite advances in acquisition speed. The proposed system addresses these challenges by rethinking both the technical configuration and the patient experience, enabling upright, fast, and user-friendly imaging.
At its core the system features a vertical “walk-through” PET scanning concept, in which patients enter the scanner and remain in a standing position between two detector panels for a short duration (30 seconds to 2 minutes). This flat-panel design, inspired by airport security scanners, eliminates the need for complex patient positioning on beds, thereby reducing handling time, increasing the number of patients scanned per day and enabling more efficient use of the produced radiotracer. The latter is particularly important given the high cost and short half-life of PET tracers.
The CT component is designed as a vertical, cost-effective system compatible with the flat-panel PET configuration, enabling anatomical imaging and attenuation correction while maintaining a compact footprint. Deep learning based sinogram completion and iterative reconstruction is used to reduce the number of required projection angles.
The vertical orientation requires the development of a novel multimodality gantry and ergonomic patient support for both PET and CT imaging. Throughout this process, a user-centred, iterative design approach is followed, incorporating feedback from patients, clinicians, and technical experts. The patient support structure is designed to ensure comfort and stability while minimizing motion during scanning, which is critical in upright imaging.
We compared motion and patient experience between a WT-PET scanner with head support, and a conventional cylindrical PET-CT. WT-PET showed increased motion, most pronounced at the shoulders (~2x: 1.91 ± 1.07 vs. 0.98 ± 0.77 mm) and moderate at the head (1.84 ± 1.17 vs. 1.30 ± 0.68 mm), for 5-min upright versus 8-min conventional scans. Various motion management strategies are being investigated. The system will use smooth rotational and translational mechanics to minimize patient perception of movement and reduce imaging artifacts both within and between modalities. During PET, motion is mitigated by performing very short frame reconstructions followed by image registration. Between modalities, registration will be achieved using AI-derived anatomical maps from PET aligned with CT images.
From a market perspective, the proposed system responds to a growing global demand for accessible and efficient imaging solutions. Current PET-CT and standalone CT systems are expensive, bulky, and resource-intensive, limiting their availability, especially in lower-resource settings. By reducing system complexity, footprint, and cost while increasing throughput, the WT-PET-CT has the potential to democratize access to advanced imaging technologies in developing regions.
| Track | Deployment of Nuclear Medicine in LMICs: Enabling Technologies |
|---|---|
| Presentation type | Oral |