Positron emission tomography
(PET) is a molecular imaging tool developed in the 1970s that
maps the biodistribution of radioactive tracers (radiomarkers) in the body and measures their intracellular activity on a whole-body scale.
Used as a clinical standard since the late 1990s, PET imaging is used to detect and monitor the activity of diseases such as cancer, neurodegenerative diseases, and immuno-inflammatory diseases. The
SHFJ, the first European center to benefit from a clinical research PET device, has
decades of experience in PET molecular imaging.
In practice, the method used to acquire PET images is known as “static”: a “frozen”
map of the distribution of the radiotracer in the body is produced at a given moment in time, sufficiently long after its injection, when the
product has reached equilibrium in the body. The
dynamic approach, which is historical but
reserved for research, consists of
continuously monitoring the distribution of the radiotracer in the body during PET acquisition.
Appropriate post-processing of this 4D PET acquisition generates advanced images reflecting the intracellular exchange flows of the radiotracer, providing information that is richer in biological meaning. This approach, known as “dynamic parametric PET imaging,” is still
rarely used in clinical practice, but the arrival of suitable equipment could change this. However,
the computer processing required to model these advanced images is complex and time-consuming.
To meet this challenge, researchers at BioMaps and the Orsay Mathematics Laboratory (CNRS/Inria)
have developed PET KinetiX, a software program capable of rapidly analyzing dynamic PET images of the entire body, regardless of the PET device used[1].
In order to assess its reliability, the two teams recently carried out high-definition simulations using PET-4D medical data, which is currently limited in practice, and a high-resolution digital twin of human anatomy[2]: the researchers were able to simulate 400 dynamic PET scans of the chest, including different tissues (heart, liver, lungs, tumors, etc.), in an extremely realistic manner and process them with PET KinetiX. The results are very encouraging: the parametric maps produced by PET KinetiX accurately reflect the expected biological structures, with a level of detail identical to that of standard clinical PET images, and even higher if the data comes from recent devices with an extended field of view.
In
summary, PET KinetiX is a very fast and adaptive software program that can be
used to model advanced biological parameters from dynamic PET images. This tool
paves the way for more accessible and therefore wider use of this technology in
clinical settings, for better diagnosis and monitoring of certain serious
diseases. It is currently being tested in academic settings in collaboration
with several university hospitals in Europe and America.
Contact BioMaps / Frédéric-Joliot Institute for Life Sciences: