Patients undergoing a Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scan in today’s bulky shaped machines must lie completely still. As a result, scientists can’t use the scanners to unearth links between movement and brain activity. For example, the scanner can’t be used to determine if the brains of people struggling to walk after a stroke differs from people able to walk.
Julie Brefczynski-Lewis, Neuroscientist at West Virginia University (WVU) www.wvu.edu is partnering with Stan Majewski Physicist at WVU at the University of Virginia www.virginia.edu to develop a miniaturized PET brain scanner.
The scanner called the “Ambulatory Microdose PET or (AMPET) can be worn like a helmet allowing research subjects to stand and make movements as the device scans. Because AMPET sits so close to the brain, it can catch more of the photons stemming from the radiotracers used in PET than larger scanners can. This means that researchers can administer a lower dose of radioactive material and still get a good biological snapshot.
Catching more signals also allows AMPET to create higher resolution images than regular PET scans. More importantly, PET scans allow researchers to see further into the body than other imaging tools. This lets AMPET reach deep neural structures while the research subjects are upright and moving.
The AMPET scanner will be able to launch new psychological and clinical studies on how the brain functions when affected by diseases from epilepsy to addiction and during ordinary and dysfunctional social interactions.