The Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y. has announced important developments in using imaging to screen for Alzheimer's disease and breast cancer.

For breast cancer, a prototype breast imaging system using both positron emission tomography (PET) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technologies is thought to offer potential for significant improvement in breast cancer imaging. The research was presented at the Society for Nuclear Medicine's 56th Annual Meeting. The system has not yet been tested on humans, however initial results of the PET and MRI fusion of images should lead to more accurate classifications of lesions in the breast.

"PET and MRI systems are both powerful, noninvasive tools for detecting breast cancer and evaluating treatment, but each of them also has weaknesses," said Bosky Ravindranath. Ravindranath is a research assistant working with Dr. David Schlyer at Brookhaven, and lead author of a study on preliminary testing of the prototype. "We believe that combining PET and MRI in a single system will eventually yield highly sensitive and specific breast cancer examinations while at the same time compensating for the shortcomings that exist when using only PET or only MRI."
Breast cancer is a leading cause of death for women, and a significant challenge to treatment and diagnosis is obtaining accurate images of dense breast tissue. In this new system, when completed, there will be a modular 3D tomographic PET scanner that is inserted inside a dedicated breast MRI coil produced by Aurora Technologies, Inc., which allows both PET and MRI images to be taken simultaneously. The advantages include the modularity of the PET system allows for the scanner diameter to be adjusted for patient breast size, information from the MRI should enhance the resolution provided by PET, and the predictive power of PET for tumor identification should assist MRI technology's traditionally high false-positive rates.

The press release says researchers expect to begin testing the system shortly with breast cancer patients.

Alzheimer's Studied

For Alzheimer's Disease, Brookhaven researchers have demonstrated a new, highly detailed x-ray imaging technique. This may be used for early diagnosis of Alzheimer's. The x-ray method has been previously been used to examine breast tissue tumors and cartilage in human knee and ankle joints. According to a press release by Brookhaven, the new study is the first to test the x-ray's use in detecting the class of miniscule plaques that strongly indicate Alzheimer's disease. The results will appear in a July 2009 edition of the journal NeuroImage.

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