SNMMI white paper on theranostics.

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Clearpath has developed technology to enable imaging providers to ditch the disc when giving medical images to legal, provider, patients, and other clinical applications. The company made its debut at #SIIM23 in Austin, and we caught up with President Lauren Brown and CTO Kamil Rahme on the show floor in this video interview.

Theranostics

Theranostics Grabs SNMMI Spotlight

The emerging field of theranostics – in which two radiopharmaceuticals work in tandem for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes – is one of the most exciting new areas of medicine. Nowhere is this more evident than at this week’s SNMMI 2023 meeting in Chicago. 

Theranostics involves the use first of a highly targeted diagnostic radiotracer to detect pathology with a technology like PET, then sending in another tracer to deliver a stronger radioactive payload to the site of disease – almost the definition of precision medicine. Some estimates are that theranostics could soon develop into a market worth $30B.

In addition to talks on theranostics, SNMMI 2023 highlights so far have included presentations covering the following:

• An ultra-high-resolution brain PET scanner that can visualize and quantify nuclei in the brainstem for the first time, opening up new inquiries into neurological disorders like Alzheimer’s disease
• The discovery of the optimal tracer kinetic model for quantifying myocardial uptake of ¹⁸F-flutemetamol in patients with transthyretin (ATTR) cardiac amyloidosis, a buildup of amyloid plaque in the heart
• A technique called augmented whole-body scanning via magnifying PET (AWSM-PET) that uses two high-resolution add-on detectors as an “outsert” to improve image resolution and reduce noise
• Imaging of rheumatoid arthritis with ⁶⁸Ga-FAPI PET/CT, which showed a greater number and degree of affected joints than FDG-PET/CT
• A PET radiotracer called ¹⁸F-Cholestify has the potential to improve neuroimaging by visualizing metabolic cholesterol degradation in the brain.

The commercial side of SNMMI 2023 is active as well. Siemens Healthineers, GE HealthCare, and United Imaging Healthcare are launching new hybrid scanners, and other vendor news includes the following: 

• Blue Earth Diagnostics is touting its recent shipments of Posluma, a PET radiotracer targeting PSMA in prostate cancer patients
• GE HealthCare is migrating AIR technologies found on its MRI scanners to its new Signa PET/MRI AIR system (see below) 
• Isotopia is discussing its plans for a US radioisotope manufacturing facility
• Lantheus researchers are presenting talks on AI-enabled PSMA-PET reporting using its Pylarify AI software
• Mediso received FDA clearance for its InterView Fusion and InterView XP multimodality image processing and reporting software
• Siemens Healthineers has launched a new PET/CT scanner, Biograph Vision.X, sporting a 20% improvement in time of flight (see below)
• Subtle Medical is demonstrating its SubtlePET solution, which uses AI to remove noise for low-count PET images, enabling up to 75% faster PET scans
• Telix Pharmaceuticals is highlighting clinical results of several agents: the Illuccix gallium-based prostate cancer imaging agent; ProstACT lutetium-based antibody-directed prostate cancer therapy; and TLX250-CDx, a zircon-89-based tracer for diagnosing clear cell renal cell carcinoma.
• United Imaging Healthcare is launching uMI Panorama, a new wide-bore PET/CT scanner (see below).  

The Takeaway

This week’s proceedings in Chicago illustrate the new energy that theranostics is bringing to nuclear medicine and molecular imaging, one of radiology’s most venerable modalities. Stay tuned for the announcement of SNMMI’s Henry N. Wagner, Jr. Image of the Year award, always a conference highlight.  

The Benefits of Point-of-Care MRI

How does point-of-care MRI benefit neurocritical patients? Learn about the inherent advantages of portable MRI and how it has impacted patient care decisions in this informative webinar hosted by Hyperfine.

The Case for Enterprise Cloud

Is your organization ready to move enterprise imaging to the cloud? Check out this Change Healthcare and ACHE webinar detailing cloud-native imaging’s benefits, best practices, and ROI.

The Wire

• Siemens Debuts New PET/CT: A new PET/CT scanner, Biograph Vision.X, is being debuted by Siemens Healthineers at SNMMI 2023 this week. A key feature of the system is its 178-picosecond time of flight (TOF), a 20% improvement in TOF that enables improved lesion detection and anatomical detail. Biograph Vision.X is based on silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) detectors, which support 3.2 x 3.2mm lutetium oxyorthosilicate (LSO) crystal elements for higher spatial resolution.

• Challenges of Theranostics: The emerging field of theranostics presents a number of education and training challenges to practitioners, and a new white paper in JNM describes what’s being done globally to address them. The paper describes how academic societies in different countries are approaching education and accreditation, in particular training for the administration of radionuclide therapies. Part of the field’s complexity comes from its need to draw on the expertise of specialists in nuclear medicine, internal medicine, radiology, and radiation oncology. 

• GE HealthCare Launches PET/MRI: GE HealthCare is launching its newest PET/MRI scanner, Signa PET/MR AIR, at this week’s SNMMI 2023. The system represents the migration of GE’s AIR technologies to its PET/MRI platform, including AIR Coils, flexible radiofrequency coils that offer better patient comfort and image quality, and AIR Recon DL, GE’s deep learning-based data reconstruction protocol. What’s more, the scanner includes MotionFree Brain PET for managing patient motion without external tracking devices.

• AI Detects Child Abuse on CT: AI algorithms could be used to detect subtle signs of child abuse on pediatric brain CT scans that might otherwise be missed, says a new paper in JAMA Network Open. Researchers developed a deep learning model to analyze CT scans to detect retinal hemorrhage, or bleeding of blood vessels in the retina. This condition is often missed except in cases of very large bleeds, but in 301 patients the algorithm classified retinal hemorrhage with sensitivity of 79.6% and specificity of 79.2%. 

• United Imaging’s New PET/CT: At SNMMI 2023, United Imaging Healthcare is launching uMI Panorama, a new PET/CT product line built around technical specs that include 2.9mm NEMA resolution, 35cm axial field of view, and 194-picosecond temporal resolution. One member of the new family, the 510(k)-pending uMI Panorama GS, sports an ultra-long 148cm axial FOV that allows whole-body PET/CT in a single bed position. United Imaging is also highlighting its uExcel platform of hardware and software at the conference.

• Cardio Flow Design’s 4D Flow FDA: The 4D Flow MRI segment just added another competitor, following the FDA clearance of Japan-based Cardio Flow Design’s iTFlow solution. Like other 4D Flow products, iTFlow uses CMRI data to support blood flow analysis and evaluation, while providing users with fluid dynamics visualization of heart and blood vessels in both 2D and 3D.

• ChatGPT Picks the Right Breast Tests: The two most recent versions of ChatGPT did a good job of picking follow-up breast imaging tests that conformed to clinical guidelines, says a new study in JACR. Researchers from Mass General Brigham had ChatGPT 3.5 and ChatGPT 4 suggest the best imaging tests to use for 21 clinical scenarios related to breast screening and breast pain. ChatGPT 4 had a higher rate of answers that conformed to clinical guidelines than ChatGPT 3.5 (98.4% vs. 88.9%). 

• RadNet Supersizes Public Offering: Imaging services provider RadNet turned in a boffo public offering, raising gross proceeds of $259M after originally expecting to raise $175M. The company sold 8.7M shares of common stock at $29.75 per share, and says it will use proceeds to retire debt and for general corporate purposes. The supersized offering underscores investor enthusiasm for the company, which could be related to its recent activities in AI.

• MRA for PE: Pulmonary MR angiography (MRA) is a suitable alternative to CT for diagnosing pulmonary embolism, and departments that made the switch helped conserve iodinated contrast media during the 2022 shortage. Researchers in AJR found that they saved 27 liters of Omnipaque contrast over 4 months in 2022, and performed more MRA than CTA exams during four weeks of the study period. The findings show that pulmonary MRA can be a good substitute for CTA in emergency settings.

• NVision Raises $54M: German hyperpolarized MRI developer NVision Imaging has raised a $35M Series A funding round, with the German government kicking in another $19.5M. NVision is commercializing NVision Polarizer, which uses polarized MRI to detect cellular metabolic function for rapid treatment monitoring. The company will target preclinical applications first, followed by use in humans, and it already has a partnership with Siemens Healthineers. Activity in polarized MRI is high, as witnessed by a recent deal between Philips and Polarean. 

• Philips Unveils 5500CV Echo: Philips’ debuted its new cardiology-focused Ultrasound Compact 5500CV system at ASE 2023, bringing the image quality, workflows, and transducers found in Philips’ cart-based EPIQ CVx and Affiniti CVx echo systems into a wireless and portable setup. To support its mobile use, Ultrasound Compact 5500CV also features an optional 2.5hr battery and supports remote collaboration via Philips’ Collaboration Live solution.

• Subtle Medical Nabs Recognition: Subtle Medical has been named to CB Insights’ 2023 list of top 100 AI companies worldwide. The laureates were picked from a pool of nearly 9k companies, and were chosen based on criteria developed by CB Insights that included R&D activity, business relationships, investor profiles, news sentiment analysis, and technology novelty and market potential.

Learn About Total-Body PET/CT at SNMMI 2023

What is United Imaging Healthcare discussing at SNMMI 2023? Two satellite symposia – on total-body PET/CT and PET/CT for clinical molecular imaging – are among the many exciting events in Chicago.

How to Standardize CT Images

The quality and appearance of CT scans can vary considerably. In this white paper from Riverain Technologies, find out how image normalization can standardize CT images, making them easier to analyze and interpret.

DASA and CARPL.ai’s Pediatric AI Evaluation

When Sao Paolo’s Diagnosticos da America SA (DASA, the world’s fourth largest diagnostics company) set out to evaluate Qure.ai’s QXR solution for their pediatric chest X-ray workflows, they leveraged CARPL.ai’s platform to streamline their evaluation. See how it worked here.

The Resource Wire

• Ready to improve your mammography workflows? Arterys is the first and only cloud-native breast AI provider, and its solution dramatically reduces 3D mammography reading times, while supporting breast cancer detection, density measurements, and personalized risk assessments.  

• Want to perform PET scans faster, but keep the same image quality? With SubtlePET image enhancement from Subtle Medical, you can conduct PET exams in one-quarter of the original time while preserving image quality. Find out how in this case review. 

• How important is image quality in molecular imaging? Improvements in PET/CT and SPECT/CT are addressing historical challenges and empowering clinicians with more accurate and detailed information. Learn more in this white paper from GE HealthCare. 

• Why should your health system/imaging organization be considering cloud-based PACS? Find out from real-world, live customers in this video why Visage Imaging’s Visage 7 CloudPACS offers major benefits over the limitations of legacy PACS.

• Bayer’s cloud-based Calantic Digital Solutions AI platform features a suite of disease-specific AI apps that integrate into radiologist workflows, helping radiology teams scale AI deployment and improve efficiency and quality of care.

• Managing imaging exams brought in by patients on CDs was slowing down the workflow at Boston Children’s Hospital, the largest pediatric trauma center in New England. Find out how the hospital’s pediatric trauma service turned to Intelerad to solve the problem in this case study. 

• What’s the latest news from Merge by Merative? Get an update on the company’s activities in enterprise imaging, VNA and viewers, workflow orchestration, and radiology departmental solutions from General Manager Ashish Sant in this interview from SIIM 2023. 

• How is fast, quantitative SPECT/CT supporting quicker assessment of treatment response in patients with metastatic prostate cancer? Find out in this case study from New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, provided by Siemens Healthineers. 

• Annalise.ai’s Annalise CXR solution detects up to 124 findings in a single chest X-ray. See how it detects such a wide range of abnormalities using these demo studies…  or upload your own CXR images.

• What kinds of medical imaging exams are radiologists reading today, and how confident do they feel across different subspecialties? Find out in the 2023 Radiology Practice Development Report from Medality.  

• In a session from SIIM 2023, radiology industry thought leaders discussed AI’s return on investment. We covered some of the high points in this video interview with Matt Lungren, MD, and Sander Kloet of Nuance Communications. 

• What’s happening with the ongoing collaboration between Bayer and Blackford Analysis? Get an update from Bayer’s Thanos Karras and Blackford’s Ben Panter in this video interview from SIIM 2023. 

• New technology from Us2ai called Us2.connect allows you to add echo AI automation to any echo device. Any echo machine can now have 100% automated reporting with disease detection and editable measurements – all generated in realtime as you scan.

• What are the top 5 innovations in radiology? In this article, find out what the folks at Enlitic think are the trends transforming medical imaging and improving patient care.