New Imaging Facilty Offers Combination PET/CT Technology

Houston’s first freestanding PET/CT imaging facility opened May 12, and is combining the advantages of both positron emission tomography and transmission computer-assisted tomography.

St. Luke’s Episcopal Health System and PET Imaging of Houston have begun offering PET/CT imaging at a freestanding unit located near St. Luke’s Diagnostic and Treatment Center – Kirby Glen, at 2493A South Braeswood (at Kirby).

PET/CT is a non-invasive diagnostic imaging procedure that uses some of the advantages of CT for anatomic resolution to supplement the PET images depicting metabolic aspects of human physiology. In addition, the combination of PET with CT in the same machine allows PET imaging to be performed in a shorter time period, increasing patient comfort.

For a PET scan, the patient is injected with a form of glucose that has a minute amount of a signal-emitting radioisotope attached (a “tracer”). The tracer is absorbed by many cells, but active cancer cells frequently accumulate it to a greater degree than normal tissues because tumors commonly exhibit accelerated glucose uptake. The images map the activity of tracer uptake, allowing clinicians to better identify where cancer cells are active or have metastasized.

While neurologic and cardiologic applications of PET have been around longer, the primary application for PET/CT today is the detection, staging and re-staging of cancers. Additional indications are evolving rapidly.

Because of the precise imaging accomplished by PET/CT, fused images can also be used to target radiation treatment very accurately and monitor the effects of chemotherapy, surgery and radiation treatment.

“We are very pleased to make available this latest technology to our community,” said Michael Jhin, president and CEO, St. Luke’s Episcopal Health System. “It complements the fine range of services provided at St. Luke’s Texas Cancer Institute at St. Luke’s Diagnostic and Treatment Center – Kirby Glen.

CT, now in use for two decades, has become the main diagnostic imaging tool used in the initial staging of cancer. However, CT has some limitations, said Warren Moore, M.D., St. Luke’s chief of nuclear medicine.

“It doesn’t always pick up pathologic changes in normal-sized structures and may miss identifying a lesion that has no clear contrast in density with the surrounding tissue. PET provides additional metabolic information that helps detect primary tumors, metastases and early tumor recurrence. It lacks, however, the fine anatomic detail of CT,” Moore said.

Combining these modalities, he said, allows better localization of abnormal regions seen on the PET images.

“One of the biggest advantages of PET/CT scanning is that it can provide an alternative to more invasive procedures, including surgery,” said Brian Miles, M.D., medical director, St. Luke’s Texas Cancer Institute. “Offering this service may allow us to avoid potentially invasive testing and surgery, increase patient comfort, and reduce patient complications and mortality, while at the same time saving health care dollars.”

PET Imaging of Houston is a joint venture of e+healthcare LLC and St. Luke’s Episcopal Health System. e+healthcare develops and manages fixed-site PET and PET/CT imaging centers in partnership with physicians and hospitals.

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