This month’s intriguing images come from radiation oncologist Ian Crocker and colleagues. Each one shows a patient with a glioblastoma, an aggressive brain tumor. The patient’s brain was scanned in two ways: on the left, MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) and on the right, PET (positron emission tomography), using a probe developed at Emory. We can see that the tumor’s PET signal is more distinct than the tumor’s appearance on MRI.
Since the 1990s, Mark Goodman, John Votaw and colleagues at Emory’s Center for Systems Imaging have been developing the probe FACBC (fluoro-1-amino-3-cyclobutyl carboxylic acid) as a probe for the detection of tumors.
Most PET imaging uses radioactive glucose as a probe to see tumors. Healthy brain tissue avidly takes up glucose, so distinguishing the tumor against a bright http://www.usofacomputers.com background is a problem. FACBC is an unnatural amino acid taken up by tumor cells at a rate several times faster than normal cells, allowing more contrast between tumor and normal tissue.
In addition to brain tumors, FACBC has been used as a probe for imaging prostate cancers. More studies are underway, and FACBC has been licensed to Nihon and GE.
The images were presented at the 2013 ASTRO (American Society for Radiation Oncology) conference, which was held in Atlanta in September. According to the ray ban outlet presentation from radiation oncology resident Edward Marchan, 22 brain tumor patients were enrolled in FACBC PET from 2008 to 2013.
From the abstract:
Whether the absolute level of or a change in FACBC uptake post treatment predicts outcome of therapy remains to be determined. As well, it remains to be determined whether FACBC uptake outside of the MRI-anatomically defined GTV [tumor volume] may identify occult tumor.
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