Abstract
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Objectives Perform dynamic PET studies of patients injected with low doses of F-18 and C-11 radiotracers with a dedicated 3D brain scanner: NeuroPET.
Methods NeuroPET offers both high image quality and the potential to significantly reduce patient dose to enable safe multiple repeat scans of the same patient for longitudinal studies, response to therapies, or recurrence monitoring. This can be important in both research and clinical setting for natural history studies of disease progression, therapy trials, or clinical observation of response. A compact and moveable dedicated 3D brain scanner can be more easily sited than a general-purpose whole-body machine, at a fraction of the system cost. We have designed and built several such machines, and acquired human images which were reconstructed from list mode data. We collect list mode data incorporating measured energy and timing information on each coincidence event, plus a sampling of singles events. The former is useful for accurate background subtraction, while the latter is useful for run-specific (rate-dependent) normalization and live fraction corrections. While providing additional information to improve quantitative accuracy, this "extended list mode" data facilitates dynamic imaging of F18 and C11 tracers and offline re-analysis of research PET data.
Results We demonstrate that the scanner is capable of making high quality dynamic brain images with a sub-milliCurie FDG patient dose.
Conclusions NeuroPET, with its high sensitivity, high spatial resolution and flexible software, is an ideal PET scanner to perform dynamic brain imaging
- © 2009 by Society of Nuclear Medicine