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Welcome to our comprehensive profile on Imagin Molecular Corporation
(OTCBB: IMGM)
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ABOUT PET
Positron Emission Tomography (PET) is an imaging technology that can reveal both anatomic and physiologic information in various tissue sites. The physiologic information is what distinguishes it from MRI and CT imaging which provide primarily anatomic information. PET uses radiotracers composed of organic compounds (such as glucose or ammonia) labeled with positron-emitting isotopes. These radiotracers can be metabolized in ways which signal disease processes; an example is cancer cells having a higher rate of glucose metabolism, which can be captured as a “hot spot” in the scanned image. While PET has been around for twenty years or more, it was primarily limited for much of that time to assessing brain function, such as seizures. In 1995, the federal Medicare program approved payment for studies of cardiac perfusion. Beginning in 1999, the Health Care Financing Administration approved reimbursement for a number of new clinical indications, all but one having to do with cancers.
PET is similar to other nuclear medicine technologies in which radiopharmaceuticals are injected into patients to assess metabolic activity in various regions of the body. However, PET provides information not available from traditional imaging technologies, such as MRI, CT and ultrasound, which depict changes in the patient’s anatomy rather than changes in physiology. Physiological activity provides a much earlier detection measure for certain forms of disease, cancer in particular, than do anatomical changes over time.
PET is now coming to the forefront of medical imaging because of improved clinical acceptance, excellent reimbursement, cost effective direct patient management and more importantly, the desire of patients to have access to the best technology available today. As a result, the worldwide PET Imaging market is experiencing rapid growth due to significant clinical results in recent oncology studies and improved reimbursement trends, leading to higher adoption and utilization of the technology.
Even with its high growth rate, PET has a long way to go to significantly penetrate the diagnostic imaging market. Approximately 900,000 PET scans were performed in 2004, compared to a total of 66 million procedures for CT, MRI, and nuclear studies. The numbers of PET scans are increasing dramatically, now that PET is no longer only for research. It is estimated that by 2010, in excess of 2,000,000 PET scans will be performed.
The Company will offer physicians and their patient’s access to the highest quality and most cost-effective PET and molecular imaging technology available, and will support this technology with a full spectrum of clinical and operational efficiencies.
Cardiovascular PET Perfusion Imaging
Positron Emission Tomography (PET) is the most accurate non-invasive test for identifying narrowed coronary arteries or the mild cholesterol build-up or diffuse coronary vascular disease that is responsible for most heart attacks. A cardiac PET scan is a type of non-invasive stress test in which blood flow to your heart muscle is visualized with a radiotracer and a special scanner. Pictures of the blood flow to the heart muscle are taken before and after pharmacologic stress instead of exercise to determine if maximum blood flow is restricted by narrowing or cholesterol deposition in your coronary arteries. Even a modest cholesterol build up in the artery that may not be seen on an arteriogram may affect blood flow in the heart muscle enough to be detected by the PET scan.
Pictures of the heart muscle are taken at rest and after dipyridamole stress. In areas where there is a localized narrowing of a coronary artery, the maximum blood flow to the heart muscle is reduced, creating an area of relatively low blood flow on the PET scan. Cholesterol deposition diffusely that narrows the coronary artery uniformly along its whole length causes a gradually progressive, decreased blood flow to the tip of the heart. The resulting abnormality on the PET scan is different from the severe defects being milder and more graded but still characteristic. This graded pattern of blood flow on the PET scan identifies the diffuse atherosclerosis present. PET imaging is the only diagnostic test that can evaluate the cumulative effects of all the coronary atherosclerosis along the length of the artery and the changes in response to treatment and lifestyle with either improvement or worsening.
Cardiac positron emission tomography (PET) imaging has advanced from primarily a research tool to a practical, high-performance clinical imaging modality. The widespread availability of state-of-the-art PET gamma cameras, the commercial availability of perfusion and viability PET imaging tracers, reimbursement for PET perfusion and viability procedures by government and private health insurance plans, and the availability of computer software for image display of perfusion, wall motion, and viability images have all been a key to cardiac PET imaging becoming a routine clinical tool. Although myocardial perfusion PET imaging is an option for all patients requiring stress perfusion imaging, there are identifiable patient groups difficult to image with conventional single-photon emission computed tomography imaging that are particularly likely to benefit from PET imaging, such as obese patients, women, patients with previous nondiagnostic tests, and patients with poor left ventricular function attributable to coronary artery disease considered for revascularization. Myocardial PET perfusion imaging with rubidium-82 is noteworthy for high efficiency, rapid throughput, and in a high-volume setting, low operational costs. PET metabolic viability imaging continues to be a noninvasive standard for diagnosis of viability imaging. Cardiac PET imaging has been shown to be cost-effective. The potential of routine quantification of resting and stress blood flow and coronary flow reserve in response to pharmacologic and cold-pressor stress offers tantalizing possibilities of enhancing the power of PET myocardial perfusion imaging. This can be achieved by providing assurance of stress quality control, in enhancing diagnosis and risk stratification in patients with coronary artery disease, and expanding diagnostic imaging into the realm of detection of early coronary artery disease and endothelial dysfunction subject to risk factor modification. |
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