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Notice ID:75320992340002
PET / MR system has advanced features for resolution, sensitivity, and flexibility of use. These features provide better quality images, improved detection of abnormalities in disease, and lower radia...
PET / MR system has advanced features for resolution, sensitivity, and flexibility of use. These features provide better quality images, improved detection of abnormalities in disease, and lower radiation exposure to patients. These features are used in many planned clinical research protocols and patient care applications, including: to better understand and treat neuropsychiatric conditions such as opiate abuse, schizophrenia, and chronic pain; to perform more complex and informative MR scans simultaneously with PET; to image blood flow, metabolism and function of the heart in patients with cardiovascular disease; to detect and assess the extent of metastases in cancer patients; to scan pediatric patients in whom radiation exposure is a concern; and to scan very obese patients. To achieve the NIH’s clinical research goals, the PET/MR systems must meet four (4) requirements: First requirement: PET sensitivity must be greater than 20 cps/kBq (counts-per-second/ kilobecquerel) with PET time of flight capability and PET spatial resolution of 4.5 mm or better. This requirement gives the technician the ability to reduce the amount of injected radioactivity and radiation exposure for patients without compromising quality of diagnostic PET scans. A lower radiation dose per scan enables multiple, repeat scans in the same subject as required by certain clinical research protocols. This requirement also provides for improved detection of tumors and metastases in cancer patients due to increased scanner resolution, sensitivity, and S/N (signal-to-noise) ratio and provides for improved PET measurements from small brain structures involved in the pathophysiology of neuropsychiatric disease. Second requirement: equipment must have multi-delay, multi-echo acquisition capability. The requirement for multi-delay, multi-echo acquisition capability provides the ability to obtain multiple types of images in a single scan to significantly reduce scan time, which allows for additional complementary data acquisition during the same imaging session. This requirement reduces the negative effects of patient motion during the scan session. It also provides the ability to change the contrast of images after the acquisition to enhance the ability of the interpreting radiologist to detect abnormalities in clinical patient scans. Third requirement: equipment must have PET time of flight capability (timing resolution of 400 picoseconds or better where lower is better). This allows for correction for truncation of body contours, which arise from differing PET and MRI fields-of-view, resulting in more accurate clinical image data. Fourth requirement: equipment must have multi-band Echo-Planar Imaging (EPI) capability, with speedup of 4x or better. This allows for simultaneous PET/MR pharmacological studies with high spatiotemporal resolution (2mm isotropic, 1 second) to filter out physiological noise in the study of small brain structures and improving visualization of those structures.