Fatty acid metabolism is affected by different pathologies — it can be elevated in diabetics or its oxidation can be impaired in heart failure patients. Lyons believes it's important to quantitatively analyze tracer kinetics in the presence of those conditions, to assess the response of therapeutic drugs over the long term.

"Quantitative assessment is an inherent strength of PET imaging, so new frontiers that assist medical decision-making could be forged here, with the long-term goal of earlier and more appropriate interventions at less cost," said Lyons.


The Phase II data was presented at the European Association of Nuclear Medicine (EANM) Annual Congress in Barcelona, Spain this week. The congress brought together over 6,000 nuclear medicine practitioners and stakeholders.

In September, data from the trial was presented at the 21st Annual Meeting of the American Society of Nuclear Cardiology (ASNC) in Boca Raton, Florida.

Dr. Gary Heller of Morristown (New Jersey) Medical Center presented the study results. Dr. Heller, an ASNC past president, co-authored the study with the principal investigator, Professor Olivier Gheysens, the Phase II clinical investigators in Belgium, and Dr. Manuel Cerqueira of the Cleveland Clinic.

"We found that the image quality for CardioPET was significantly better than the comparative SPECT studies," said Heller at the time. "Diagnostically, CardioPET correctly identified ischemia in both exercise and pharmacologic stress studies, and the overall diagnostic accuracy for CardioPET was confirmed to be comparable to that of SPECT."

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