SNMMI 2024 wrapped up this week in Toronto, Canada, with the conference once again demonstrating the utility of nuclear medicine and molecular imaging for applications ranging from neurology to oncology to therapeutics.
An annual SNMMI highlight is always the Image of the Year designation, and this year’s meeting didn’t disappoint.
- The honor went to a set of ultra-high-resolution brain PET images acquired with United Imaging’s NeuroEXPLORER (NX) scanner, a PET/CT system that the company developed with Yale and UC Davis and introduced last year for research use (although a clinical introduction could be forthcoming).
The NX system sports a cylindrical design with a 52.4cm diameter and long axial field-of-view of 49.5cm; in the talk presented at SNMMI, researchers compared it to high-resolution research tomograph images with tracers targeting different dopamine receptors and transporters.
- Researchers said the NX system had “exceptional” resolution in cortex and subcortical structures, with “low noise and exquisite resolution,” and predicted NX would “dramatically expand the scope of brain PET studies.”
Other important presentations at SNMMI included papers finding …
- An AI algorithm developed at Johns Hopkins detected six different types of cancer and automatically quantified tumor burden on whole-body PET/CT scans
- In a study of 10.5k patients, AI that analyzed SPECT/CT images was able to predict all-cause mortality with an AUC of 0.77 by using CT attenuation correction scans to calculate risk factors like coronary artery calcium
- Cognitive training is less effective in older adults who have beta-amyloid deposits in the brain on PET scans
- An ultra-low-dose PET protocol presented by researchers from Bern University Hospital in Switzerland and Siemens Healthineers used deep learning reconstruction for a 50X reduction in PET radiation dose, to 0.15 mSv
- A gallium-68 FAPI-based PET radiotracer was more accurate than fluorine-18 FDG for systemic staging of newly diagnosed breast cancer
- A new chelating agent that binds radiometals to the parts of molecules that target cancer reduced off-target toxicity in PSMA radiopharmaceutical therapy
- A combination of alpha- and beta-radionuclide therapy that combined actinium-225 with lutetium-177 worked well for colorectal cancer in a preclinical study
- Research sponsored by Novartis on radioligand therapy for prostate cancer with lutetium-177 PSMA-617 (Pluvicto) was chosen as Abstract of the Year
The Takeaway
This year’s SNMMI presentations highlight the exciting advances taking place in nuclear medicine and molecular imaging, with the rise of theranostics giving the field an entirely new wrinkle that places it even closer to the center of precision medicine. Perhaps a new letter – T – will need to be added to the conference before too long.
