The Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging has chosen its 2022 Image of the Year, and it’s one that is sure to interest anyone in the field of cardiac imaging.

Salvage radiation therapy guidelines for patients with prostate cancer recurrence need to be updated to include findings identified on PSMA PET, according to new research shared at SNMMI’s annual conference this week. 

“High-quality artificial intelligence-generated images preserve vital information from raw PET images without the additional radiation exposure from CT scans,” experts involved in the study explained.

Hybrid PET/CT enhanced with intravenous CT contrast deserves wider acceptance and adoption, as diagnostically optimized CT can complement PET—and vice versa—for a variety of potential indications. That’s one opinion on the matter.

For 45% to 47% of patients who were deemed negative after conventional baseline scans, the use of the radiohybrid imaging agent resulted in at least one true positive PET finding

The study, which followed 195 patients recently diagnosed with multiple myeloma (MM), found that a negative PET/CT scan six months after diagnosis and induction therapy was significantly linked with improved survival.

The new equipment, which initially will be used to treat prostate and neuroendocrine tumors, is expected to be operational in July.

In pediatric care settings, hybrid PET/MR imaging combines “exquisite soft-tissue information obtained by MR imaging with functional information provided by PET.”