Breast PETX: Mammography Machine PET Scanner with Biopsy Guidance

描述(申请人提供)：乳腺癌通常在表现时为1期(2厘米)，由于空间分辨率有限，这限制了普通功能成像方式在早期乳腺癌检查中的使用。在华盛顿大学(UW)，正电子发射断层扫描(PET)已经成功地作为生物标志物用于提供局部晚期乳腺癌的预后信息和评估治疗。我们在这个项目中的长期目标是扩大PET作为乳腺癌治疗反应的生物标志物的使用。这将更具体地指导治疗选择，导致改善结果，并防止与无效治疗相关的成本和副作用。为了实现这一目标，高分辨率、定量准确的PET将与临床乳房X光照相或断层合成和活检引导方法相结合。该项目的目标是：(1)设计使用与盖革模式硅光电倍增器耦合的单片闪烁晶体的PET探测器单元；(2)建造和测试与传统的乳房X光摄影/断层合成机架匹配的全断层PET扫描仪，以在乳房X光摄影套件中结合PET和X光成像；(3)将PET扫描仪与临床乳房X光摄影或断层合成设备和活组织检查指导相集成；(4)对原型进行表征，并通过试点患者研究对其进行测试。这将是华盛顿大学和通用电气全球研究中心之间的合作。使用在华盛顿大学开发的单片晶体探测器方法，基础探测器的开发将由GRC领导，并由UW联合调查员密切参与；GRC团队还将领导系统集成到乳房X光成像设备上；整体系统性能和临床实施将在UW带头进行。这项工作的结果将是一个专用的乳腺PET系统，它在乳房X光照相套件中运行；最初用于扩大目前正在使用临床PET进行的晚期乳腺癌的治疗评估试验。该设备将使研究将PET用作早期疾病的生物标记物，包括使用UW放射化学回旋加速器提供的各种PET示踪剂。它将是一个商业就绪设计的原型，可以复制到其他机构部署。拟议的系统将提供一种临床工具，有效地研究PET在对抗早期乳腺癌方面的可能用途。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Breast cancers are typically Stage-1 (<2cm) at presentation, which limits the use of common functional imaging modalities in the work-up of early breast cancer because of limited spatial resolution. At the University of Washington (UW), positron emission tomography (PET) has been used with success as a biomarker to provide prognostic information about and evaluate therapy in locally advanced breast cancers. Our long-term goal in this project is to expand the use of PET as a biomarker for treatment response in breast cancer. This will more specifically direct therapy selection, resulting in improved outcomes and preventing cost and side effects associated with ineffective therapy. High resolution quantitatively accurate PET will be integrated with clinical mammography or tomosynthesis and biopsy-guidance methods to achieve this goal. The aims of this project are: (1) design a PET detector unit using monolithic scintillation crystals coupled to Geiger-mode silicon photo-multipliers; (2) build and test a fully tomographic PET scanner that mates to a conventional mammography/tomosynthesis gantry for combined PET and x-ray imaging within the mammography suite; (3) integrate the PET scanner with clinical mammography or tomosynthesis equipment and biopsy guidance; (4) characterize the prototype and test it with pilot patient studies. This will be a collaboration between the UW and the GE Global Research Center. Using monolithic crystal detector methodologies developed at UW, the basic detector development will be lead by GRC with close involvement of UW co-investigators; GRC team will also lead systems integration onto mammography equipment; the overall system performance and clinical implementation will be spearheaded at the UW. The result of this work will be a dedicated breast PET system that operates in a mammography suite; initially used to expand therapy evaluation trials currently underway for advanced breast cancer using clinical PET. The device will enable investigation of using PET as a biomarker in early stage disease, including the use of diverse PET tracers available from the UW Radiochemistry cyclotron. It will be a prototype for a commercial-ready design that can be replicated for deployment at other institutions. The proposed system will provide a clinical tool to effectively investigate possible uses of PET to fight early-stage breast cancer.