Los Angeles -- A newly developed portable,
point-of-care PET technology can image any organ, delivering high-quality
results to guide interventional procedures. With real-time visual feedback, the bedside technology provides a cost-effective approach for
hospitals to perform biopsies, tumor ablations, and other procedures in
constrained clinical environments. This research was presented at the Society
of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging 2026 Annual Meeting.
Current interventional procedures (minimally invasive,
image-guided techniques used to diagnose or treat conditions) rely mainly on
anatomical imaging such as ultrasound, x-ray fluoroscopy, and CT for guidance. Studies
have shown that interventional radiology procedures guided by a dedicated
PET/CT achieve higher accuracy; however, this solution is cost-prohibitive to
most hospitals and thus not widely available.
"A portable PET device with real-time imaging capability
could bring vast information and benefits from molecular imaging to
interventional radiology procedures," said Yuan-Chuan Tai, PhD, senior author, from
Washington University in St. Louis. "To address this unmet need, we developed a
portable point-of-care PET system with a robotic arm that can position detector
panels at arbitrary locations to image any organ of interest."
Using the portable point-of-care PET system, the study
investigated the feasibility of interactive PET scanning and a real-time image
updating strategy. A phantom containing three clusters of radiotracer-filled rods
was imaged with the point-of-care PET detector panels moved to six user-selected
positions. Image reconstruction began with five iterations using data from the
first position, followed by alternating single-iteration updates as data from
each new position become available. Since data acquisition time was
significantly longer than the reconstruction time, images were continuously
updated as data was acquired. A conventional PET reconstruction framework, in
which images were generated after the entire scan was completed, was also used
for comparison.
The image quality from portable point-of-care PET using a
real-time image updating framework was comparable to conventional
reconstruction framework. Phantom structures become clearly distinguishable
after three to four positions, suggesting that scanning could be terminated
early if imaging tasks can be fulfilled. Alternatively, image quality can be
further improved with additional scanning positions and/or reconstruction iterations.
"This proposed approach better supports interactive and
adaptive imaging workflows at the bedside," said Xiyan
Li, a graduate researcher in Imaging Science doctoral program at Washington
University in St. Louis.. "It represents a paradigm
shift that offers new avenues to deploy novel molecular imaging applications."
The current study utilized a benchtop prototype system for
point-of-care PET. Researchers are currently building a prototype system suitable
for initial human imaging study which will begin in 2027.