Siemens Medical Solutions showed a prototype for the world’s first fully-functioning imaging system capable of performing simultaneously Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and Positron Emission Tomography (PET).

The first in-vivo human brain simultaneous MR-PET images were acquired in the Siemens facilities in USA. Testing of this new prototype MR-PET will start before the end of 2007.

Siemens is the first company to have realized an MR-PET prototype, which brings the exceptional soft tissue contrast and high specificity of MR together with PET’s excellent sensitivity in assessing physiological and metabolic state. The first MR-PET images were acquired with support of the University of Tennessee, USA, and the University Tübingen, Germany. MR-PET has the potential to become the imaging modality of choice for neurological studies, certain forms of cancer, stroke, and the emerging study of stem cell therapy.

Researchers expect that MR-PET will open new doors in understanding the pathologies and progression of various neurological disorders like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, epilepsy, depression and schizophrenia. For example, PET can currently differentiate mild cognitive impairment from early-stage Alzheimer’s, but cannot determine reduced brain volume caused by atrophy. By combining MR and PET, clinicians may be able to make a more sound determination of both cognitive impairment and atrophy. Furthermore, combining MR-PET and the new emerging neurological biomarkers, has the great potential to strengthen the assessment of the condition.

Similarly, in stroke patients, the technology holds the promise of allowing physicians to study which brain tissues might be salvageable after a stroke. In other rehabilitation settings, such as for patients with traumatic brain injury, the Siemens MR-PET approach would improve care and workflow. In that case, patients would be only scanned once instead of having to go to two different locations and get two subsequent scans.

MR-PET holds great promises for emerging therapeutic research as well, as in the case of stem cell therapy. Because the Siemens MR-PET approach allows simultaneous measurement of anatomy, functionality and biochemistry of the body’s tissues and cells, it may enable researchers to correlate MR and PET data in a way not previously possible before. This correlative approach will enable to get a much deeper understanding of track stem cell migration to damaged parts of the brain, determination over a prolonged period whether or not cells are still alive, and identification of how stem cells have been integrated into the body’s neurological network.