MADEIRA

Minimizing Activity and Dose with Enhanced Image quality by Radiopharmaceutical Administrations

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 Obiettivo del progetto (Objective)

'MADEIRA aims to improve 3D nuclear medical imaging technologies significantly. Achievements will be made in terms of reduction of radiation exposure, increase of spatial and temporal resolution. In consequence, the applied techniques will offer better and more detailed pictures for diagnosis obtained with less exposure to radioactivity. Due to the introduction of new diagnostic procedures such as CT, PET and SPECT, the individual dose caused by medical exposures rapidly grew in the last years. This is especially a subject to radiation protection for nuclear medical diagnosis since in this case radiopharmaceuticals are administered to the patient meaning not only a radiation exposure to the unhealthy tissue but also to the healthy tissue of large parts of the body. When dealing with cancer any improvement in the efficacy and availability of proper diagnostic procedures turns out into a benefit for the patients. Early diagnosis reduces mortality and other serious implications like loss of quality of living or high therapy costs. Diagnosis that provides information about - activity of the cancerous tissue - in what 3D region of the cancer and - what kind of cancer to be treated in each specific case is very important. 3D functional nuclear medicine imaging satisfies the above requirements. Especially the combination of today’s systems with CT scanners allows simultaneous acquisition of anatomical and functional information. MADEIRA will improve the efficacy and safety of 3D PET and SPECT functional imaging by optimising the spatial resolution, the signal-to-noise ratio and the knowledge of the temporal variation of the radiopharmaceuticals’ uptake in and clearance from tumour and healthy tissues and evaluating the corresponding patient dose. By this approach to an optimized imaging procedure gaining more information per administered dose MADEIRA will especially reduce the dose to healthy tissue of the patient.'

Introduzione (Teaser)

Prompt cancer diagnosis is heavily reliant on sensitive tools providing detailed images of anatomical and functional information. If the safety of these techniques could improve in terms of radiation exposure, then we would have the best of both worlds.

Descrizione progetto (Article)

New diagnostic procedures such as computerised tomography (CT), positron emission tomography (PET) and single photon emission computerised tomography (SPECT) entail the introduction of radiopharmaceuticals to patients. This results in increased radiation exposure of healthy tissues as well.

The EU-funded 'Minimizing activity and dose with enhanced image quality by radiopharmaceutical administrations' (Madeira) project was designed to address this problem. By performing biokinetic investigations and modelling, partners obtained important knowledge of the radiation exposure associated with each of the most widely used medical imaging techniques.

At the same time, the Madeira project intended to develop new add-on hardware (PROBE system) in order to enhance spatial resolution of existing PET systems and obtain three-dimensional (3D) information. To test and compare the different approaches, a specialised software tool was created enabling image processing. Further developments enabled scientists to calculate relevant dose distributions in the body and to optimise signal-to-noise ratios in order to reduce the radioactivity required to obtain a good image.

Collectively, the methods developed during the Madeira study were intended for personalised medicine. The ultimate goal was to assess and optimise the radiation required for each patient to obtain successful diagnostic information with a particular nuclear medical imaging technique.

Training courses and conferences ensured appropriate dissemination of the project's results. Partners are hopeful that their methods have the potential to reduce the administered radioactivity at least a factor of three without compromising the sensitivity or resolution of the imaging techniques.