Radiologist developing new hybrid PET and CT imaging tool to better characterize diseases
A UC Davis Health researcher has scored a $628,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health to help develop and test a new hybrid method of imaging.
Combining PET and CT scanning, this method would add spectral CT as another dimension of information to clinical PET/CT, according to a university announcement. Integrating PET’s molecular imaging capabilities with CT’s means of measuring tissue composition could lead to new multiparametric imaging solutions that would allow for better characterization of certain cancers and heart diseases, noted Guobao Wang, PhD, an associate professor in the Department of Radiology at UC Davis Health.
“Successful development of this project will bring a new technical capability of PET/CT scanners for dual-energy or multi-energy spectral CT imaging,” Wang said in a statement. “This is possible without changing scanner hardware or increasing radiation exposure to that of a standard clinical PET/CT scan.”
Wang next plans to test the PT-enabled, dual-energy CT method through phantom validation and animal studies before eventually moving to clinical trial.
His work was made possible through the a “Trailblazer R21” grant, awarded to early stage investigators pursing programs of high interest to the NIH and the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering.
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.