UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center Magazine Fall 2015 | Page 8
research update
Envisioning the Future:
UAB’s Advanced Imaging
Facility Continues to Shine
By JOSH TILL and BEENA THANNICK AL
Since opening in 2013, the UAB Advanced Imaging Facility (AIF) has steadily grown into one of the most
advanced and cutting-edge facilities not just in Alabama, but across the United States.
The AIF, located in the basement of the UAB
Comprehensive Cancer Center’s Wallace Tumor
Institute, houses the most innovative, cutting-edge
forefront of patient care and research, improving our
ability to diagnose and monitor treatment.”
Unlike other imaging techniques, PET scans
Positron Emission Tomography (PET) imaging
can provide unique cellular, biological and molecular
equipment found in Alabama, which expands UAB’s
information occurring in an organ or tissue and can
capability for both clinical and experimental PET. As
provide a whole body assessment, ultimately helping
part of the UAB Department of Radiology, the facility
to manage the disease in a more efficient, precise and
has two time-of-flight GE Discovery 710 PET/
accurate way. Specifically, PET can detect whether
CT scanners and recently acquired a state-of-the-art
lesions are benign or malignant at their earliest stages.
PET/MR machine, which combines the capability of
It can also verify suspected cancer reoccurrence,
molecular imaging with PET and the high resolution
determine whether chemotherapy or other treatments
of MR (magnetic resonance) imaging.
are working as intended, and sometimes provide
Weighing in at 18,000 pounds, the PET/MR
is one of the first of its kind by GE installed in the
United States. Along with the facility’s other imaging
information that can help eliminate the need for
surgical biopsy or unnecessary surgeries or treatments.
During a PET scan, a patient is injected with a
equipment, it will play an important role in moving
small amount of a radiotracer that travels through the
therapies and improved diagnostics more rapidly from
body and is utilized by the tissues or the organ being
the laboratory to the patient bedside in many research
studied. The patient is then moved to one of the
areas, including cancer, neuroscience and cardiology,
PET scanners, which contain an array of detectors
says Janet Eary, M.D., director of the AIF and Cancer
that receive the energy emitted by the radiotracer.
Center senior scientist. “While PET/CT is used for
The system then processes that information and
both clinical and research imaging, the PET/MR is
generates the images to be interpreted by specially
used primarily for research. This positions UAB at the
trained UAB faculty.
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