This project is financially supported by the National Science Centre through the MAESTRO 2021/42/A/ST2/00423 programme.
The goal of this project is the elaboration of new non-invasive imaging methods for positron emission tomography of the whole human body which would enable fast and real-time diagnosis of cancer and cardiovascular diseases. The resulting methods will be verified by clinical trials with healthy subjects as well as patients with cancer and cardiovascular diseases.
Positron emission tomography (PET) is a well-established diagnostic method enabling the detection of tissue pathology on a molecular level before it evolves into functional or morphological abnormalities. Currently, routine PET diagnosis with scanners of about 20 cm in length, in a single bed position, enables for the simultaneous diagnosis of individual organs only, and the diagnosis of the whole body requires a combination of a series of sequential images obtained for many patient positions in the scanner. With the advent of the total-body PET, a PET with a length of 200 cm, precision medicine has been enhanced with a new tool that allows for the simultaneous molecular imaging of the whole human body. Thanks to the high sensitivity, total body PET enables the significant reduction of the whole-body imaging duration or the reduction of the dose of the radiopharmaceutical, thus opening perspectives for the application of PET to a wider group of patients also those having systemic diseases. PET is most often used for the diagnosis of cancer diseases, however, in the case of the total-body covering it may be also effectively used for the diagnosis of cardiovascular diseases.
This project is financially supported by the Foundation for Polish Science through the TEAM/2017-4/39 programme.
The proposed project aims at the elaboration of novel cancer staging indicators based on the properties of positronium atoms formed in the human body during the PET diagnosis and the elaboration of the method for in vivo imaging of these indicators. The basis of the proposed research constitutes the Jagiellonian Positron Emission Tomograph (J-PET) whose novelty lies in employing long strips of plastic scintillators instead of small size crystals as detectors of annihilation photons. We will explore new possibilities opened by the J-PET tomograph enabling measurement of the lifetime and production probability of positronium atoms formed copiously inside human body during the routine PET imaging. This fact was never used so far in the medical diagnosis. The probability of creation and lifetime of an ortho-positronium atom depend strongly on the size of the free volumes between molecules and thus they are related to the nanomorphology of cells and may be used as cancer staging indicators.