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Human Images From World's First Total-Body Scanner Unveiled (medicalxpress.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Medical Xpress: EXPLORER, the world's first medical imaging scanner that can capture a 3-D picture of the whole human body at once, has produced its first scans. The brainchild of UC Davis scientists Simon Cherry and Ramsey Badawi, EXPLORER is a combined positron emission tomography (PET) and X-ray computed tomography (CT) scanner that can image the entire body at the same time. Because the machine captures radiation far more efficiently than other scanners, EXPLORER can produce an image in as little as one second and, over time, produce movies that can track specially tagged drugs as they move around the entire body.
EXPLORER will have a profound impact on clinical research and patient care because it produces higher-quality diagnostic PET scans than have ever been possible. EXPLORER also scans up to 40 times faster than current PET scans and can produce a diagnostic scan of the whole body in as little as 20-30 seconds. Alternatively, EXPLORER can scan with a radiation dose up to 40 times less than a current PET scan, opening new avenues of research and making it feasible to conduct many repeated studies in an individual, or dramatically reduce the dose in pediatric studies, where controlling cumulative radiation dose is particularly important.
EXPLORER will have a profound impact on clinical research and patient care because it produces higher-quality diagnostic PET scans than have ever been possible. EXPLORER also scans up to 40 times faster than current PET scans and can produce a diagnostic scan of the whole body in as little as 20-30 seconds. Alternatively, EXPLORER can scan with a radiation dose up to 40 times less than a current PET scan, opening new avenues of research and making it feasible to conduct many repeated studies in an individual, or dramatically reduce the dose in pediatric studies, where controlling cumulative radiation dose is particularly important.
As someone who actually knows about this technology... and the scanner in question, this thing really is a game changer.
The PET resolution in humans is top tier via derenzo phantom and combined with the installed CT and speed, anatomic resolution is on the order of a few mm for 1 minute scans. No other current human PET/CT scanner even comes close to the combined specs. Scan longer and the PET images eerily begin to start resembling MR images... not kidding on this. ...and yes, MR is great for many things including exquisite soft tissue detail; but, MR scans are very lengthy, expensive and it can never do the things this scanner can like:
show glucose metabolism over the whole body over time in realtime ... repeat line... you get the picture.
show dopamine uptake in the brain in realtime... and the rest of the body
show amyloid deposition in the brain or body in realtime
show compound deposition changing over a MONTH (with appropriate positron tracer) from a single administration
show distribution over
Scan a kid without anesthesia (who would otherwise need it) in ~1 minute ( as an experiment go ahead an try to get a 2 year old to hold absolutely still for 20 minutes without anesthesia)
other applications (way too long to list... like hundreds long)
Basically, the applications are really vast for a scanner of this design for both research and high resolution and high throughput of clinical patients.
But, back to the MRI bit; MRI falls short in complex physiologic dynamic functions whereas this scanner is in a class all to itself.
Oh and to answer the question... the whole body is scanned (for the PET portion) all at once (it's two meters long of detectors)... it's not interpolated or stitched.