China self-developed full-digital PET completes multiple brain imaging

WUHAN -- China's first home-developed full-digital positron emission tomography scanner has completed multiple clinical cases of brain imaging.

It was recently installed in the First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-Sen University in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, Guangdong province.

Mainly used for early diagnosis and accurate treatment of neurological diseases such as brain tumors and Parkinson's disease, the equipment is believed to be the world's first full-digital PET exclusively developed for cerebral imaging.

It was developed after 19 years of efforts by a team led by Xie Qingguo, a biomedical engineering professor at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, capital of Central China's Hubei province.

"Multiple clinical trials have provided clear images of brain sulci and gyri and legible pictures of ventricles of the brain," said Zhang Xiangsong, chief physician of the Department of Nuclear Medicine at the hospital.

The brain imaging results reflected an ultra-high biochemical sensitivity of the PET system, which has great potential for exploring brain science and studying brain diseases, he added.

A 30-year-old female patient of the hospital was recently diagnosed with Parkinson's disease by the equipment. "With early detection and proper therapy and medication, she can still expect to live as long as a healthy person," Zhang said.