I am often asked to lecture about PET and PET/CT to local groups, having ushered our state into the positron era. Of course, our state was the last to get a PET scanner, but I'm the one that brought it here! Anyway, my PET/CT lecture ends with the image above, a simulated combination PET/Virtual CT. Wouldn't it be nice if the bad stuff lit up like this?
I won't take credit for the idea, as I probably saw it somewhere. Still, I was thrilled to see a real demonstration of the concept in this month's Journal of Nuclear Medicine. In the article "Flying Through" and "Flying Around" a PET/CT Scan: Pilot Study and Development of 3D Integrated 18F-FDG PET/CT for Virtual Bronchoscopy and Colonoscopy by Andrew Quon, Sandy Napel, Christopher F. Beaulieu and Sanjiv S. Gambhir, from Stanford use a GE AW 3D workstation (oh well) to fuse a volume-rendered virtual colonoscopy (and bronchoscopy) to a volume-rendered PET. Here's the result:
Now, the paper and pdf versions of the article don't show the virtual fly-through, but I'll bet it's pretty spectacular. Great idea, huh?
I am often asked to lecture about PET and PET/CT to local groups, having ushered our state into the positron era. Of course, our state was the last to get a PET scanner, but I'm the one that brought it here! Anyway, my PET/CT lecture ends with the image above, a simulated combination PET/Virtual CT. Wouldn't it be nice if the bad stuff lit up like this?
I won't take credit for the idea, as I probably saw it somewhere. Still, I was thrilled to see a real demonstration of the concept in this month's Journal of Nuclear Medicine. In the article "Flying Through" and "Flying Around" a PET/CT Scan: Pilot Study and Development of 3D Integrated 18F-FDG PET/CT for Virtual Bronchoscopy and Colonoscopy by Andrew Quon, Sandy Napel, Christopher F. Beaulieu and Sanjiv S. Gambhir, from Stanford use a GE AW 3D workstation (oh well) to fuse a volume-rendered virtual colonoscopy (and bronchoscopy) to a volume-rendered PET. Here's the result:
Now, the paper and pdf versions of the article don't show the virtual fly-through, but I'll bet it's pretty spectacular. Great idea, huh?