PET scanner sensitivity is still poor, not allowing follow-up studies on the same patient to be safely performed due to the high radioactive dose necessary. Unfortunately, the recent advent of PET/MR has not improved the situation on psychiatric disorders since some limitations of PET technology remain unsolved:
However, the utility of PET imaging for the clinical diagnosis of mental disorders is practically limited by: the significant high cost, the complexity of the infrastructure required to generate radiopharmaceuticals and the limited sensitivity and resolution of current scanners. Molecular Imaging (especially PET, Positron Emission Tomography) is an extremely useful technique for understanding the pharmacological treatment of schizophrenia and severe depression and it has helped developing the most recent generation of effective drugs. MRI and fMRI have been shown to differentiate diagnosed schizophrenia from healthy controls only on a statistical basis within a population sample but not on individual basis. A significant reduction in TSPO binding has been found in gray matter in a small sample of drug-naïve, first episode psychosis patients, suggesting a reduced number or an altered function of immune cells in brain at early stage schizophrenia.Ĭurrently, the two main functional imaging modalities, functional MRI (fMRI) and Molecular Imaging (MI), cannot be used to clinically diagnose schizophrenia nor depression, two major mental disorders, for a variety of reasons. It has been shown that 11 C-raclopride has higher binding potential in a new VAAT null mutant mouse model of schizophrenia compared to wild type control animals. A cost-effective and simple method of radiopharmaceutical production from 11C-carbon monoxide and a mini-clean room has been demonstrated. The achieved spatial resolution, close to 1 mm, will enable differentiation of relevant brain structures for schizophrenia.
Preliminary measurements from the PET scanner show sensitivity 3 times higher than state-of-the-art PET systems that will allow safe repeated studies on the same patient. It consists of a high sensitivity and high resolution PET scanner integrated in a novel, head-dedicated, radio frequency coil for a 3T MRI scanner. An innovative imaging system for the human brain examination, allowing simultaneous acquisition of PET/MRI images, has been designed and constructed. We present the first results of the MINDVIEW project.