JOIN USManipal HealthMap Diagnostics Private Limited has introduced the state of the art Positron Emission Tomography (PET-CT) at Kasturba Hospital, Manipal.
PET-CT is a nuclear medicine imaging modality which combines a Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scanner and a computed tomography (CT) scanner, to acquire and create a single fused PET/CT image.
Positron Emission Tomography and Computerised Tomography (PET-CT) was inaugurated by Manipal Education and Medical Group Chairman Dr Ranjan R Pai.
MAHE Vice-Chancellor Dr M D Venkatesh said nuclear medicine is a specialized branch in the medical field which uses radionuclides for diagnosis and treatment of patients suffering from various diseases.
A disease-specific ligand is attached to a radionuclide, which when injected into a patient, traces and binds to a specific receptor expressed on the pathological cell/organ. SPECT/CT and PET/CT are the two advanced imaging equipment in Nuclear Medicine used for diagnostic purposes.
With this new machine in place, Kasturba Hospital, Manipal, now has both state of the art SPECT-CT and PET-CT which are very important for physicians to diagnose the accuracy of the diseases and timely treatment, he added.
MAHE Pro-Chancellor Dr H S Ballal said the PET part assesses the functional aspect of the disease where it detects any abnormal function of the diseased cell, molecular interactions and pathways within the human body. The CT part gives anatomical characteristics of the diseased site. Together, they form a powerful imaging tool which aids in the accurate management of various diseases.
“In oncology, this is used for staging, response assessment, recurrence detection of a majority of cancers. Now, this is also being used as a predictor and prognostic marker for various targeted therapies. In neurology, this is used for early diagnoses (detected significantly earlier than other imaging modalities) of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, for diagnosis and classifying dementia etc. In Cardiology, it is mainly used for myocardial viability assessment post MI, risk stratification in coronary artery disease (aids in decision making of invasive vs non-invasive management of cardiac ischemia), cardiac sarcoidosis and infective endocarditis and is also helpful to physicians to know infective foci in fever of unknown origin, assessing the extent of disease and treatment response in vasculitis, interstitial lung diseases, granulomatous disorders among others,” Dr Ballal added.