Not for publication in the USA or France
- New Biograph Vision™ PET/CT system1 designed for time-of-flight performance with a 249-picosecond temporal resolution2 using small 3.2 mm LSO crystals2
- Features in new software platform designed to advance clinical capabilities for Biograph Vision as well as established Biograph mCT family of PET/CT systems
At the 30th Annual Congress of the European Association of Nuclear Medicine (EANM), Oct. 21-25 at the Austria Center Vienna, Siemens Healthineers debuts the Biograph Vision1, a positron emission tomography/computed tomography system designed to deliver a new level of precision in PET/CT imaging. Also at EANM 2017, Siemens Healthineers unveils new software features designed to bring advanced clinical capabilities to the Biograph Vision as well as the company's established Biograph mCT and Biograph mCT Flow PET/CT systems.
Biograph Vision PET/CT
The Biograph Vision PET/CT system features new Optiso Ultra Dynamic Range (UDR) Detector Technology, which is based on silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs) rather than the photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) that have been the industry standard. This new system design enables Siemens Healthineers to reduce the size of the detector's lutetium oxyorthosilicate (LSO) crystal elements from 4 x 4 mm to 3.2 x 3.2 mm, resulting in higher spatial resolution, which may improve lesion detectability. Utilizing these extremely small LSO crystals and covering 100 percent of the area of the scintillator array with SiPMs2, the Biograph Vision is designed to deliver the industry's fastest time-of-flight (TOF)3, with a temporal resolution of just 249 picoseconds2.
The Biograph Vision also has a large 78 cm bore that offers 24 percent more space than the industry standard³. This larger bore is designed for improved patient comfort and positioning, and for advanced applications in radiation therapy (RT) planning.
The Biograph Vision is designed to fit in a facility's existing Biograph mCT family of PET/CT systems room with no need for costly renovations.
New software platform
The new software platform from Siemens Healthineers contains four optional features that are designed to provide optimal performance to the new Biograph Vision PET/CT system. These software features also will be available as options on the company's festablished Biograph mCT family of PET/CT systems.
The QualityGuard feature1 is designed to self-calibrate the PET detector by tapping natural background radiation from the LSO detectors to run daily and weekly quality control (QC) procedures during off-hours, saving up to 30 minutes of staff time per day2. Self-calibration eliminates the need to use a radioactive source for daily and weekly manual calibration, thereby reducing the technologist's radiation exposure in addition to eliminating the need to lift the radioactive source, which can weigh 25 to 30 lbs.
A second software feature, FlowMotion Multiparametric Suite,1 is a fully automated solution designed to deliver whole-body PET images of tracer uptake rate and distribution volume, in addition to the standard static PET images.
The OncoFreeze1 feature is designed to provide images that are virtually free of respiratory motion. Traditionally, respiratory gated images use only select information from a specific portion of the patient's respiratory cycle, and the rest of the data acquired from the PET/CT scan is discarded. OncoFreeze is designed to use 100 percent of acquired information from the respiratory cycle2 and potentially allows for reduced acquisition time.
Finally, CardioFreeze1 addresses issues associated with cardiac PET/CT image acquisitions. The software is designed to correct for respiratory and cardiac motion. With CardioFreeze, each individual cardiac gate is reconstructed with 100 percent of the data acquired,2 eliminating variability from respiratory and heartbeat motion.
"The Biograph Vision PET/CT system makes a significant leap in performance beyond anything we have ever built," said Jim Williams, PhD, head of Siemens Healthineers Molecular Imaging. "It has unprecedented time-of-flight speed, extraordinary spatial resolution, and an effective count rate capacity close to triple that of current state-of-the-art devices. With this system, we push back the boundaries of PET imaging and will help to enable our clinical partners to explore a new frontier."
Link to the press pictures
