Two new studies out of France added to the growing field of evidence supporting Subtle Medical’s SubtlePET solution, with each confirming that it allows shorter-duration PET exams without affecting image quality.
The first study, published in EJNMMI Physics, proclaimed SubtlePET “ready to be used in clinical practice for half-time or half-dose acquisitions” after it restored 18F-FDG PET/CT exams from three different scanners without impacting diagnostic confidence.
The researchers performed 18F-FDG PET/CT exams on 110 patients, producing full-acquisition, 50%-reduced, and 66%-reduced images (PET100, PET50, and PET33). They then denoised the images with SubtlePET and had two senior nuclear physicians evaluate them, finding that SubtlePET improved:
- PET33 image quality from 16.7% to 86.7% “interpretable” & 0% to 26.7% “good”
- PET50 image quality from 83.6% to 100% “interpretable” & 1.8% to 84.5% “good”
- High-BMI patients’ PET100 exams from 60% to 80% “good” image quality (both were 100% interpretable)
The second study out of France’s Baclesse Cancer Center further confirmed that SubtlePET preserves 18F-FDG PET image quality with half-duration exams.
The researchers performed 90-second and 45-second 18F-FDG PET/CT exams on 195 patients (PET90 & PET45), and then used SubtlePET to denoise the 45-second images, finding that:
- PET45 exams produced mediocre image quality (8% poor, 68% moderate) and achieved an 88.7% lesion concordance rate with PET90
- After SubtlePET enhancement, PET45’s image quality matched PET90 (both 92% good, 8% moderate) and achieved a 97.7% lesion concordance rate with PET90
- 7 of the discordant lesions (0.8%) were only detected with PET90 and 13 (1.5%) were exclusively detected with SubtlePET-enhanced PET45 images
The Takeaway
May was a particularly big research month, but SubtlePET has been on an academic hot streak for over a year, including at least three previous studies validating its performance with lower radiotracer dosage and faster acquisition times.
Subtle Medical’s marketing currently appears to focus on SubtlePET’s support for shorter scans, but it’s easy to see how patients and clinicians would welcome both shorter scans and lower radiotracer dosage, and the research increasingly seems to validate both use cases.
