RSNA: Philips unveils advanced PET/CT detector
CHICAGO—Philips presented the new Vereos PET/CT system with solid state detectors at the 99th Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) annual meeting held Dec. 1-6 at McCormick Place convention center.
Among the PET/CT system’s highlights are the reportedly first-approved lutetium-based digital silicon photomultiplier detectors that Philips says boosts imaging to twice the volumetric resolution, sensitivity and quantitative accuracy.
“Personalized medicine will require a patient-specific picture of the functional processes associated with disease,” stated Pablo Ros, MD, chairman of the department of radiology at University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland, via press release. “Accurate quantification of processes is therefore an important requirement for functional imaging in diagnosis, therapy and research.”
Each detector is comprised of 23,040 individual detector cells on a small silicon panel that miniaturizes the hardware in comparison to the conventional analog photomultiplier tubes.
The Vereos received 510(k) clearance by the FDA in August and was first installed at University Hospitals of Cleveland.
The digital movement in PET/CT systems is slowly gaining traction, with oncologic working group data starting to support it. “Nine out of ten referring clinicians preferred digital PET/CT in a third party study,” Philips’ senior director of product management, Kiril Shalyaev, told Molecular Imaging.
Shalyaev added that the new direction in PET detectors would certainly be an industry-wide shift over-time.