SNMMI impressed me this year. Last year, the show was in Vancouver and there were a number of international attendees. This year, given that the show was in St. Louis, there were fewer international attendees, but based on my informal poll, there were more sales orders taken.

Interestingly enough, there were two large trailers at the show, each containing a PET/CT. One was brought by Advanced Mobility and the other by Kentucky Trailers. It seems as though there is greater demand for mobile PET and that there are more providers interested in sharing a PET/CT rather than owning a dedicated unit.

When I asked a friend about why PET was not growing, he pointed to a brochure on his desk and laid a book of matches on the top of the brochure. He explained that the brochure represented the size of the SPECT market and the box of matches represented the size of the PET market - that is to say, PET is just a small fraction of the overall nuclear market. In fact, he told me he felt that the demand for nuclear medicine was increasing and he expected it to grow even more so.

Back at the show, many people I visited with echoed this view. Meanwhile, everybody was talking about the looming molybdenum-99 shortage. It is on everyone's mind and everyone has an opinion on it and a theory about what caused it and how to solve it. It reminds me of the helium shortage in MRI, but in many ways, the threat is greater.

I attended some lectures and I was very impressed. During one lecture, Dr. Christopher Contag talked about a tiny microscope to help find residual cancer after an operation.

All in all, I was impressed and I left the show with the feeling that the nuclear medicine industry will be growing in 2015.

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