Imaging to understand whole-body processes such as novel drug interactions during therapeutic development will soon be accessible through Australia’s first research-dedicated Total Body PET (TB-PET).
The Sydney Imaging Core Research Facility at The University of Sydney, in partnership with Northern Sydney Local Health District (NSLHD) and the National Imaging Facility (NIF), has established a Total Body PET facility in the Department of Nuclear Medicine at Royal North Shore Hospital.
TB-PET can be used to capture molecular processes from all organs simultaneously. The high-performance instrument can be used to study diseases that affect the entire body and build a better picture of complex processes such as ageing, metabolism, brain signalling and drug interactions.
Due to its exquisite sensitivity, it also has the potential to use much lower radiation doses compared to conventional PET scanners, making it safe to scan children, healthy volunteers, and to scan patients repeatedly to better understand disease progression and treatment effects.
TB-PET is accessible for research studies through Sydney Imaging Core Research Facility, the University of Sydney Node of the National Imaging Facility. For more information, contact Dr Georgios Angelis.
Watch recordings below, and sign up to the mailing list to hear about future webinars.
In a departure from the usual format, this webinar features co-inventors of TB-PET, Professor Simon Cherry and Professor Ramsey Badawi, in conversation with Alex Burton, Senior Manager, Marketing and Communications for the National Imaging Facility (NIF). Simon and Ramsey engage in a discussion about their journey in developing TB-PET, its exceptional scientific and clinical capabilities, the most surprising applications of the technology, and their insights on what the future may hold.
Professor Andrew Scott AM
Olivia Newton-John Cancer Research Institute, National Imaging Facility
Associate Professor Nikolaos Karakatsanis
Cornell University
Professor Fernando Calamante
Director of Sydney Imaging, The University of Sydney
Professor Simon Ringer
Pro-Vice Chancellor (Research Infrastructure), The University of Sydney
Distinguished Professor Simon Cherry
Biomedical Engineering Professor, University of California, Davis
Dr Kevin London
Medical Co-Head and Senior Staff Specialist, Westmead Hospital
Professor Gemma Figtree
Professor in Medicine, The University of Sydney
Professor Andrew Zalesky
Professor in Psychiatry and Biomedical Engineering, Melbourne Neuropsychiatry Centre and Department of Biomedical Engineering, The University of Melbourne
Professor Ollie Jay
Director, Heat and Health Research Incubator, The University of Sydney
A/Prof Roslyn Francis, University of Western Australia, provides an overview of the Australian Radiopharmaceutical Trials network (ARTnet) and the site credentialling program.
Dr Kathy Willowson, Senior Medical Physicist at Royal North Shore Hospital, gives a technical overview of scanner harmonisation strategies within ARTnet.
Dr Joyce van Sluis, University Medical Center Groningen, will talk about the European experience towards harmonisation and standardisation of long axial FOV PET for multi-centre imaging studies.
Dr Ryan Sullivan from The University of Sydney will present an overview of the Australian Imaging Service and the storage solutions that will be available for research studies in the Total Body PET Facility.
Dr Tom Close from The University of Sydney gives a practical demonstration on how users of the facility can access their Total Body PET data stored on the Australian Imaging Service.
Professor Thomas Beyer talks about the open-source data analytics tools and pipelines that have been developed at the Medical University of Vienna, Austria, to investigate multi-organ interactions and enable robust Total Body PET connectome studies.
Dr Tao Sun from the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences presents a recently proposed framework that applies network analysis principles on Total Body PET data to identify metabolic dysfunctions at the system level.
Prof Glaudemans discusses the differences between scanning on a Total Body PET compared to other conventional systems, highlights some key opportunities that Total Body PET systems may offer in the future.
Professor Michael Kassiou showcases the role of PET imaging in general, and Total Body PET in particular, in drug discovery. He discusses how Total Body PET can be used to identify novel targets for drug and radiopharmaceutical development and to assess their efficacy.
Dr Giancarlo Pascali provides an overview of the workflow for selecting the appropriate target, molecule, isotope, and experimental setup, highlighting the value of Total Body PET imaging.
Dr John Doan describes the current and future NIF plans for radiochemistry support for the Australian National Total Body PET Facility. He also discusses the infrastructure requirements to produce a range of radiotracers and discuss where they can be sourced from.
Introduction to the new facility, the operational model and the available resources to all researchers across Australia.
Overview of Total Body PET technology and how the new facility will fit within the existing clinical research imaging landscape.
Overview of the technical specifications and capabilities of the new Biograph Vision Quadra Total Body PET system set to be installed.