Total-body PET Scanner

Assistant Project Scientist Negar Omidvari and her colleagues have demonstrated the high quantitative precision and accuracy of the NeuroEXPLORER, a next-generation dedicated brain PET system. The paper, now available in the Journal of Nuclear Medicine, presents extensive evaluations using phantom and human data across a broad range of imaging conditions relevant to dynamic neuroimaging.

The research, published in Rheumatology included 71 adults with psoriatic arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, or osteoarthritis, and revealed that a significant proportion of inflamed joints (15%), entheses (20%), and nails (13%) were undetected by routine assessments but captured by a single, low-dose Total-Body PET scan. This work could pave the way for earlier diagnosis and better treatment of autoimmune arthritic conditions.

In an international collaboration with Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, a data correction framework was developed for the modular J-PET scanner—a cost-effective PET imaging system that uses long plastic scintillators instead of traditional, expensive inorganic crystals. Manish Das, a PhD scholar from the J-PET team and UC Davis-based Assistant Project Scientist Reimund Bayerlein successfully demonstrated promising image quality using phantom data for the first time.

The American Heart Association (AHA) has awarded Dr. Kevin Chung a highly competitive two-year Postdoctoral Fellowship to support his research on multiparametric PET imaging of the heart-brain axis. His project aims to develop a methodological framework using total-body dynamic 18F-FDG PET to assess vascular and metabolic function in both the heart and brain, a crucial step in understanding multisystemic effects of myocardial ischemia.