Submitted by Administrator on Mon, 15/10/2012 - 14:06
Author - Dr R Hawkes
The Isaac Newton Trust and the Clinical School are jointly providing funding of £48,012 to upgrade/refurbishment our novel simultaneous PET/MR scanner. This instrument was a joint development between the Wolfson Brian Imaging Centre and the Cavendish laboratory and was initially funded by the EPSRC. Simultaneous measurement is a new approach to combine functional and morphological imaging in one instrument. The value of PET lies in its high-sensitivity to measuring biomarkers, but it does not provide consistent morphology. MR has lower sensitivity, but produces high soft-tissue contrast and our initial experiments have demonstrated some of the potential of simultaneous measure. The upgrade will provide functional MR (fMRI) and should result in the instrument being available for routine use.