Human Images From World's First Total-Body Scanner Unveiled (medicalxpress.com) 54
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Medical Xpress: EXPLORER, the world's first medical imaging scanner that can capture a 3-D picture of the whole human body at once, has produced its first scans. The brainchild of UC Davis scientists Simon Cherry and Ramsey Badawi, EXPLORER is a combined positron emission tomography (PET) and X-ray computed tomography (CT) scanner that can image the entire body at the same time. Because the machine captures radiation far more efficiently than other scanners, EXPLORER can produce an image in as little as one second and, over time, produce movies that can track specially tagged drugs as they move around the entire body.
EXPLORER will have a profound impact on clinical research and patient care because it produces higher-quality diagnostic PET scans than have ever been possible. EXPLORER also scans up to 40 times faster than current PET scans and can produce a diagnostic scan of the whole body in as little as 20-30 seconds. Alternatively, EXPLORER can scan with a radiation dose up to 40 times less than a current PET scan, opening new avenues of research and making it feasible to conduct many repeated studies in an individual, or dramatically reduce the dose in pediatric studies, where controlling cumulative radiation dose is particularly important.
EXPLORER will have a profound impact on clinical research and patient care because it produces higher-quality diagnostic PET scans than have ever been possible. EXPLORER also scans up to 40 times faster than current PET scans and can produce a diagnostic scan of the whole body in as little as 20-30 seconds. Alternatively, EXPLORER can scan with a radiation dose up to 40 times less than a current PET scan, opening new avenues of research and making it feasible to conduct many repeated studies in an individual, or dramatically reduce the dose in pediatric studies, where controlling cumulative radiation dose is particularly important.
great but detail / resolution (Score:4, Interesting)
the best way has always been NMR spectroscopy or magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) which are very very detailed, they don't specify the resolution nor the interpolation (guessing) thats done so basically they will have patents galore around it compared to NMR which is much higher detail and competing equipment manufacturers
whats the advantage apart from whole body ? (that I'm guessing is actually guessed rather than scanned at the same time)
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huh-huh - hey everybody I see his ding-dong!
Then you should get out of the urinal.
Re:great but detail / resolution (Score:5, Informative)
As someone who actually knows about this technology... and the scanner in question, this thing really is a game changer.
The PET resolution in humans is top tier via derenzo phantom and combined with the installed CT and speed, anatomic resolution is on the order of a few mm for 1 minute scans. No other current human PET/CT scanner even comes close to the combined specs. Scan longer and the PET images eerily begin to start resembling MR images... not kidding on this. ...and yes, MR is great for many things including exquisite soft tissue detail; but, MR scans are very lengthy, expensive and it can never do the things this scanner can like:
show glucose metabolism over the whole body over time in realtime ... repeat line... you get the picture.
show dopamine uptake in the brain in realtime... and the rest of the body
show amyloid deposition in the brain or body in realtime
show compound deposition changing over a MONTH (with appropriate positron tracer) from a single administration
show distribution over
Scan a kid without anesthesia (who would otherwise need it) in ~1 minute ( as an experiment go ahead an try to get a 2 year old to hold absolutely still for 20 minutes without anesthesia)
other applications (way too long to list... like hundreds long)
Basically, the applications are really vast for a scanner of this design for both research and high resolution and high throughput of clinical patients.
But, back to the MRI bit; MRI falls short in complex physiologic dynamic functions whereas this scanner is in a class all to itself.
Oh and to answer the question... the whole body is scanned (for the PET portion) all at once (it's two meters long of detectors)... it's not interpolated or stitched.
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As someone who actually knows about this technology... and the scanner in question, this thing really is a game changer.
Yep. This is a huge step forwards, Star Trek teleportation is now just around the corner.
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> Yep. This is a huge step forwards, Star Trek teleportation is now just around the corner.
But what if I want to teleport farther than around the corner?
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Basically, the applications are really vast for a scanner of this design for both research and high resolution and high throughput of clinical patients.
This is something I've wondered about from a fitness and prevention perspective. Even a single scan is useful over nothing. A scan of your body internals as it changes over years would be fantastic diagnostic resource.
What a great contribution to science and medicine!
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I have a couple of questions for someone who knows the technology:
- What is a typical milliSievert (mSv) radiation exposure for performing a full-body X-ray CT with this system?
- Similarly, when using the PET functionality, what is a typical mSv dose exposure, and what is the technological difference that allows it exposure to be reduced by 40x ?
I think the equipment is great for research, but how does it fare in terms of risk/benefit for individual patients?
From other sources, a PET/CT exposes you to 25 mS
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We don't have a "typical" dose for this scanner yet because we have only scanned a few volunteers. However, the PET portion of a standard PET/CT scan gives about 7 mSv of dose (for a 10 mCi injection of FDG) , with another 7 mSv from the CT. We used a bit less radioactivity and the volunteers got about 5 mSv from the PET portion of the scan. I don't have the CT dose values to hand but they were lower than normal because we weren't testing the CT in this experiment.
To get images similar to current clinical P
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Words just don't do this justice. It's super cool science!
If you are in the field or just get a kick out of cool medical imaging, see below:
Dynamic whole body images of F-18 FDG injected and imaged dynamically (pay attention to the time stamps at the top)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaszDkmgfMY it's like hollow man but without the CGI!
Also loads of info of the actual project at:
https://explorer.ucdavis.edu
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This is a PET/CT. The CT shows the anatomy, the PET shows function (which is an entirely different purpose than typical diagnostic MR or CT). The selection of radiotracer will highlight physiological functions as they take place. MR shows soft tissue well, but not bone well. CT has worse soft tissue contrast than MR, but is faster to acquire and has higher resolution than MR.
But how about the appendix? (Score:1)
Will it be able to visualize the appendix in all its five different possible positions and variations in length and diameter? You know, so people don't suffer for years with all the variations of chronic, recurrent, or gangrenous appendicitis or appendiceal phlegmon or a stuck appendicolith when abuse of antibiotics masks the symptoms of acute appendicits, as has been known since at least 1962?
You know, because ultrasound, CT, or MRI in all its modalities (with or without contrast) can't see shit when it co
freaks (Score:1)
That's some weird-ass porn
Nothing new (Score:2)
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Did you try reading the article ?
Re:Nothing new (Score:4, Funny)
My kitty cat (aka PET) was sick once and had a full body scan. How is a human different? Yes, longer, the scanner has to scan more, but not impossible.
Are you sure it wasn't a CAT scan?
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I think that was the whole joke already. Hint: they called it their 'PET'. Hint, Hint.
Thanks for explaining, I was asking a serious question. I hope his CAT is OK.
high res (Score:1)
Soon? (Score:2)
Insurance Gold (Score:4)
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That'll be $600,000.00, thanks.
Commoditize this (Score:1)
Some one needs to commoditize this. Make the scan so cheap you can just walk in and walk out 10 minutes later with your latest full body scan on a thumb drive. So cheap they can be installed at your local mall like a photo booth. Compare your current scan to the previous scan. Computer image processing can easily spot a small lump that didn't exist on the previous scan. Think of how many treatable cancers could be identified and treated before the meat bag even knew it was there. No more invasive chec
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So cheap they can be installed at your local mall like a photo booth. Compare your current scan to the previous scan... Think of how many treatable cancers could be identified and treated before the meat bag even knew it was there.
Imagine how many cancers would be caused by hypochondriacs scanning themselves daily.
Well now they can literally find out... (Score:2)
...how full of shit someone is.
This is a PET/CT scanner, for functional imaging (Score:2)
Full body PET/CT scanners already exist but they can only scan slice-by-slice. This one creates an image in real-time of the whole body in 3D.
PET scanning is invasive because it requires the injection of a radioactive tracer. The scanner actually records simultaneous gamma-ray disintegrations. There are many available tracers allowing to measure for instance glucose metabolism, which is great for oncology (cancer medicine). This is currently the most precise way to detect many cancer lesions, particularly l