A High Resolution Clinical PET With Breast and Whole Body Transfigurations
Abstract
Despite advances in the last decade, the radiographic diagnosis of breast cancer remains uncertain. Of the annual 600,000 cases referred for biopsy by mammograms each year, 400,000 are unnecessary, costing $2 billion annually. The diagnosis of breast cancer in young women and women with silicone implants continues to be difficult. Accurate detection of small breast tumors (2-3 mm) is still to be achieved. Positron emission tomography (PET) has the potential to reduce this high health care cost, unnecessary painful anxiety, and to improve diagnosis and survivability for women of all ages. We have developed the detector and electronic technology for building an ultrahigh resolution PET camera. We propose to use such technology to construct an ultrahigh resolution PET that has a dedicated breast-diagnosis mode that has 13-26 times higher detection sensitivity than regular PET and an ultrahigh image resolution of 2.5mm compared to the 4.5-6 mm in today's PET cameras. We have already developed a scaled-down engineering prototype PET to confirm the feasibility that 2-3 mm tumor can be detected accurately. We propose to construct a scaled-up clinical version of the design so that it can be used for clinical human trials to confirm the clinical utility.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Apr 01, 2003
- Accession Number
- ADA417015
Entities
People
- Wai-hoi Wong
Organizations
- The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center