With tracing glucose into the body the parametric system obtains a better scan. PET tracer distribution—a dynamic process altered by a number of factors specific to each organ and region of interest—cannot always be accurately accounted for with SUV. Welcome, parametric imaging.
For medical technology to have real value, there must be a large track record of success. A new medical test is only viable once there is enough successful data to demonstrate the technology’s viability. This truth applies to parametric imaging: a diagnostic procedure where an image of an administered tracer is derived mathematically, potentially enabling doctors to identify cancerous lesions or map things like blood flow and cardiac activity. One great image from a PET/CT scan is fine, but consistently and routinely producing high-quality images is, for healthcare technology professionals, the proverbial Holy Grail.
For this reason alone, now is the time for parametric imaging. Because of the growing use of parametric imaging, medical professionals will soon have a much larger amount of data from successful scans, thereby opening more opportunities for its use in scanning an entire human body. “In the early days, imaging was very much organ-specific,” explains Anne Smith, a systems engineer at Siemens Healthineers who leads the feature development of parametric imaging. “You would look at the brain … or the heart … or kidneys. There was no whole-body scan as we have now.”