The world's first total-body scanner unveiled the other day can produce stunning 3D images of the entire human body. It is expected to begin imaging patients by June 2019 at the earliest.
Named "EXPLORER," the machine last week generated its first 3D scans. EXPLORER is the brainchild of UC Davis scientists Simon Cherry and Ramsey Badawi (chief of Nuclear Medicine at UC Davis Health) and can produce an image of an entire body in just 20 to 30 seconds.
EXPLORER is the world's first medical imaging scanner that can capture a 3D picture of the whole human body at once. Badawi and Cherry said they first conceptualized their total-body scanner 13 years ago.
EXPLORER can generate clearer and more accurate images that all other imaging tools. It scans a whole body some 40 times faster than PET scans now in use. It can also produce a diagnostic image in as little as 20 to 30 seconds.
Equally important, it uses a radiation dose up to 40 times less than the standard dose used in PET scans. This means a safer imaging technology with less radiation risk for patients.
EXPLORER is essentially a combined positron emission tomography (PET) and x-ray computed tomography (CT) scanner that can image the entire body at the same time. It can produce an image in as little as one second because it captures radiation far more efficiently than other scanners. Over time, EXPLORER will produce movies that can track specially tagged drugs as they move throughout the entire body.
Cherry and Badawi expect EXPLORER to have countless applications, from improving diagnostics to tracking disease progression to researching new drug therapies.
The new device should revolutionize medical imaging globally and improve diagnosis and treatment of diseases since it creates far greater detail of different components of the human body. The new imaging scanner will allow doctors for the first time to evaluate what is happening in all the organs and tissues of the body simultaneously. It can also measure blood flow or how the body uses glucose everywhere in the body.
The level of detail is astonishing, especially once they got the reconstruction method a bit more optimized, said Badawi. Using EXPLORER, doctors might see features you just don't see on regular PET scans.
More surprisingly, the dynamic sequence showing the radiotracer moving around the body in three dimensions over time "was, frankly, mind-blowing." There is no other device that can obtain data like this in humans, so this is truly novel, according to Badawi.
Researchers began working on EXPLORER in 2011 with a $1.5 million grant from the National Cancer Institute.
