Project

DUal Positron Lifetime Emission Tomography (DUPLET)

Short Summary

In recent years, there is growing evidence that the combination of metabolic- and receptor-targeted positron emission tomography (PET) imaging can optimize treatment planning for metastatic cancer patients. However, the corresponding diagnostics, performing multiple PET/CT scans, are currently not common clinical practice because of costs and availabilities issues of the infrastructure. The DUPLET project aims to leverage particle physics technology combined with state-of-the-art clinical expertise and newest radiopharmaceutical developments to combine multiple diagnostic procedures into one single scan to make optimal treatment selection viable for daily clinical practice.

Goals

The project will probe the capabilities of existing scanner infrastructure at USZ (and later other hospitals) to perform dual tracer scans simultaneously. This main goal is divided into sub-goals of the corresponding software development, studies with phantoms and finally a small clinical pilot study.

Significance

If successful, DUPLET has the immediate potential to improve patient selection, optimize the use of existing infrastructure, and further increase our understanding of different tumor behavior under treatment. DUPLET will be a true breakthrough in the PET imaging field, providing a novel technology that allows the simultaneous combination of metabolic- and receptor-targeted PET scans.

Background

Recently, treatment of certain tumors (prostate, neuroendocrine) with radiotherapy by local internal direct irradiation has seen a wide and successful adoption. However, the diagnostics to forecast an effective treatment nowadays requires two separate PET/CT scans resulting in a higher radiation dose and costs of additional scans and/or mistreatments.