The British Journal of Radiology, Vol 62, Issue 737 421-432, Copyright © 1989 by British Institute of Radiology

ARTICLES

Nuclear medicine in the 1990s: a quantitative physiological approach

RJ Ott
Department of Physics, Institute of Cancer Research, Sutton, Surrey.

This paper describes the potential advantages to medical diagnosis and treatment that might be obtained from the wider application of positron emission tomography as a clinical tool. Developments along the lines suggested here will require a radical change in thinking from both clinicians and the medically related scientific community in the UK and some enlightened and resourceful funding from a mixture of charitable, industrial and government sources. If these ideas are to be pursued successfully, then the work must start now on a much wider scale than is presently perceived in the UK, and close collaboration between physicists, engineers, chemists, biochemists, clinicians and industrialists is needed. Furthermore, it is imperative that the scientific developments now underway in silicon technology, parallel data processors, biochemical and pharmacological processes and even high-temperature superconductors be kept under close and constant review by those associated with the technological advancements of medicine, so that the value of such developments is rapidly transferred to applications to medicine. This must include closer relationships between academic medicine and science than is the general rule in the UK at present. In conclusion, the scenario presented here includes the installation of regional cyclotron facilities to provide a large number of institutions in the UK with positron-emitter labelled radiopharmaceuticals. Additionally, agents labelled with radionuclides from in-house generators and other already existing higher-energy cyclotrons will provide a versatile and valuable range of radiopharmaceuticals for the study of human disease. These developments must be supported by the manufacture of lower-cost positron camera systems, as suggested here, connected to high-data-rate parallel processors to provide images of body function and to determine the effects brought about by disease. These images may then be processed using algorithms based on kinetic models of the body systems to provide information about the basic biochemical and physiological processes of the body. Such a development could have a profound effect on our knowledge of human disease and on our ability to control and treat it successfully.