Development of a PET insert for hybrid PET/MR neuroimaging

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The combination of positron emission tomography (PET) with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) creates a powerful hybrid imaging modality due to the synergy of the sensitive molecular imaging capability of PET with the high quality anatomical, connective and functional imaging of MRI. This is particularly true for imaging of the brain, where the combination of the two modalities opens unique insights into understanding and quantifying changes in brain structure and function in neurodegenerative disease. Unfortunately, hybrid simultaneous PET/MRI is only available at a very small number of imaging centres due to the high capital costs of the currently available fully integrated PET/MRI systems. In addition, these systems are designed for whole-body oncology imaging applications, and thus are not ideal for brain imaging. We propose to develop a brain PET imaging system that can be retrofit to an existing MRI, creating the capability to perform simultaneous PET/MRI neuroimaging. As compared with existing whole body PET/MRI, the BrainPET insert will be low cost, while providing improved spatial resolution and detection efficiency due to the geometry being tailored to imaging the human brain. This project will be a partnership between researchers at the University of Manitoba and Cubresa, Inc., a medical device company based in Winnipeg. This collaboration builds on a previous successful effort in creating the Cubresa NuPET small animal PET insert system for hybrid PET/MRI that was based research conducted at the University of Manitoba. In this application, the technology behind the successful NuPET system will be scaled to be suitable for a human BrainPET system, leading to a clinical device capable of being used in any existing clinical MRI system.