Gamma Medica-Ideas Awarded Grant to Develop SPECT/MRI Technology

Gamma Medica-Ideas (GM-I; Northridge, CA, USA) has been awarded a U.S.$100,000 grant to develop a single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT)/magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) small animal imaging system. The grant is part of an $850,000 fast-track grant award from the U.S. National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (Bethesda, MD, USA).

Dr. Douglas Wagenaar, director of Medical Imaging Research for Gamma Medica-Ideas, reported that GM-I plans to develop this breakthrough technology in collaboration with Dr. Orhan Nalcioglu, director of the Tu & Yuen Center for Functional Onco-Imaging and professor of radiology, physics, and electrical engineering at the University of California at Irvine (USA); and Dr. Ben Tsui, professor of radiology, electrical, and computer engineering, environmental health sciences, and biomedical engineering at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (Baltimore, MD, USA). "Dr. Nalcioglu is one of the world's leading authorities on MRI,” said Dr. Wagenaar, "and Dr. Tsui is one of the world's leading authorities on SPECT imaging techniques, image reconstruction methods, and image quality assessment studies.”

MRI captures highly detailed anatomic images without the use of imaging contrast agents, and can enhance tumor visibility when used with contrast agents. SPECT, the most widely used nuclear medicine technique, utilizes a variety of radiopharmaceuticals to assess the molecular functions of cells and organs. GM-I and its collaborators plan to develop a dual-modality SPECT/MRI imaging instrument that will be able to acquire high-resolution, co-registered images by combining the functional information from SPECT with the anatomic information from MRI in a way that has never been done before.

Molecular (functional) imaging of small animals became prominent in the last five years with the development of dual modality imaging systems that combine nuclear medicine imaging methods (PET and SPECT) with CT imaging. However, MRI is an even more powerful anatomic imaging modality than CT (and without the use of ionizing radiation), therefore, combining SPECT with MRI is expected to provide even greater biomedical, research, and commercial benefits.

Until recently, a dual SPECT/MRI imaging system was all but impossible to build because gamma cameras used in SPECT imaging contain vacuum tubes, and signals from the cameras' vacuum tubes are severely distorted by an MRI system's magnetic field. However, GM-I recently introduced a new fully solid-state SPECT gamma camera that has no vacuum tubes. The GM-I gamma camera can be safely positioned within a magnet's bore, enabling a combined SPECT/MRI imaging system to be designed.



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