PET-MRI at China Basin

The PET-MRI scanner has the latest technology from GE Healthcare, being a hybrid imaging technology that incorporates MRI soft tissue morphological imaging and PET functional imaging. The spatial resolution of this PET system has a significant improvement over conventional PET-CT systems primarily due to the smaller ring size that has a reduced effect on the resolution from the angulation of coincidence photons. The silicon photomultipliers (SiPM's) is the photodetector of the PET component, with water cooling that stabilizes temperature fluctuation, and enables fast timing of coincidence for time-of-flight (TOF) PET acquisition. The hybrid system allows simultaneous acquisition of PET and MR data and is considered to be a non-significant risk investigational device. The major applications thus far have been to oncologic, neurological, cardiac, and musculoskeletal diseases.

Dedicated technical support staff and a research nurse are available to manage research subjects and to assist users in application development.

This system will open new opportunities for research that can benefit from the use of both PET and MRI in the same setting. In addition, it will potentially provide clinicians with a new imaging tool for the diagnosis and better management of a large array of medical conditions.