From the June 2015 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine

Stanford University in California has a GE SIGNA PET/MR for oncological research but the university will be installing another system in the fall for clinical applications. Initially it will be used for neurological cases such as studies for Alzheimer’s and dementia, radiation necrosis and evaluation of recurrent brain tumors.

Dr. Greg Zaharchuk, associate professor of radiology at the university, is particularly excited about the potential PET/MRI has to reduce radiation dose. “One of the nice things about the GE scanner is that we have been finding that in addition to having no radiation from the actual MRI portion of the exam, the detectors are more sensitive than any other detectors that have been available and so we can actually reduce the dose of radiotracer,” he says.

Zaharchuk doesn’t think it would make sense for a hospital that conducts mostly oncological exams to purchase a PET/MRI, but he thinks a hospital that conducts a lot of neurology exams would benefit from it. “Neurology, head and neck and pelvic imaging is where MRI really shines,” he says. “I think those places will be where PET/MRI is going to really show a competitive advantage over PET/CT.”
Personalizing medicine with PET/MRI
Siemens’ Voorhees believes that PET/MRI will gain a lot of interest in the next five to 10 years. “I see PET/MRI emerging and taking more of a mainstream place in the market, and sitting side by side with PET,” he says.

One area that he thinks PET/MRI will have significant value is in personalized medicine. The hope is that PET/MRI can be used to better visualize the disease, guide biopsies and identify the patient’s specific cancer phenotype as well as to select the most appropriate treatment and then measure the response to that personalized therapy.

“Cancer is often heterogeneous, whether it’s at the site of the primary tumor or in metastatic disease,” says Voorhees. “The key to personalized medicine is understanding the exact disease phenotype and then tailoring the treatment accordingly for the patient.”

Jason Lewis, president of the World Molecular Imaging Society, vice chair for research and chief of radiochemistry and imaging sciences service at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, also believes that molecular imaging is going to play a big role in personalized medicine. “I truly believe that precision medicine is only going to be possible with molecular imaging because it’s going to give you the ability to diagnose diseases in early stages, interrogate heterogeneity of a disease and monitor therapy,” he says. “That can only be done on a patient-by-patient basis with non-invasive imaging. The biopsy is going to take a small sample of something very heterogeneous.”

Lewis is also excited about a few new technologies in development. He’s particularly interested in hyperpolarized MRI, a new technology that creates MRI contrast agents with increased signal intensity, and a technique called Raman spectroscopy that detects unique photons that interact with certain atomic bonds in molecules. “I think they are going to complement each other to give the diagnostic or therapeutic answer you want in a disease,” he says.

Back to HCB News

June 2015 Magazine

Read more stories from the June 2015 issue

Molecular Imaging Homepage