Imperial Consultants

What is Positron Emission Tomography?

Positron Emission Tomography has been used in medicine and drug development for over 30 years. The method measures biochemical and physiological processes in the body, with the injection of a small amount of radionuclides of carbon, nitrogen or oxygen as tracers. Detecting the radiation emitted can then provide an accurate three-dimensional picture of the dynamic processes happening in the body.

The radionuclides are attached to either a biologically active molecule, in order to image biological processes within the body, or incorporated into a drug.

In this way PET scans are often used by the pharmaceutical industry to test the physiological effects of drugs as they provide a way of monitoring effects such as titration, biodistribution and metabolism.

Expertise at Imperial

Hammersmith Hospital has a long tradition of molecular imaging. The Clinical Sciences Centre, in which the PET group sit, is an MRC-funded centre as well as part of Imperial’s Faculty of Medicine.

The PET group at Imperial College London has been established for over 15 years, with expertise in experimental design, mathematical modelling, statistical estimation, computational chemistry and image reconstruction.

The group are experienced in catering to the needs of external companies, developing and running a three-day professional development course in Positron Emission Tomography technology and applications. The course is incredibly successful, training academics, industry professionals and healthcare staff from across the globe.

Sometimes though training isn’t enough, and so the group also make their expertise available to clients for specific projects and experiments.

Getting the most out of your experiment

Positron Emission Tomography imaging is an expensive business. Whilst the major pharmaceutical companies have the money to invest in their own PET equipment, smaller companies are left to find alternatives.

The PET group at Imperial College London can offer that alternative, providing expert advice and support in conjunction with PET facilities.

The head of the group Dr Federico Turkheimer and his team will help companies get the most out of their experimental time, providing advice during the design and set up stages of the experiment, as well as the analysis and reporting stages. With each experiment costing thousands of pounds, it’s vital to make the most of the time spent on it and the PET methodology team can ensure you get the best results, using their research knowledge to advise on areas such which radionuclide to use and how much to inject, experiment design and image acquisition and the pre-processing and analysis of the data.

“Our group are really excited to be able to share our skills with external organisations.” says Dr Turkheimer “It keeps our work relevant alongside the blue-skies research.”