This book explores the organizational and operational activities of real Positron Emission Tomography (PET) radiopharmaceutical manufacturing. Centered around the author’s professional experience, this book specifically explores: (1) the selection and preservation of operational and managerial personnel; (2) the alignment of production plans to consumer needs while still achieving financial goals; and (3) the positive and negative aspects of different operation management methods for direct and third-party production. The book offers a valuable reference for hospital managers, professionals and consultants interested or involved in developing a radiopharmaceutical facility/business or personalized medicine and special productions.

Radiochemical methodology constitutes the most important base for the successful functioning of a PET group in the routine production and development of radiopharmaceuticals. Of the several hundred products which have been labelled with positron emitters during the past two decades about 35 are presently considered to be of major interest. The time for a state-of-the-art review is right, since this field has advanced over the past fifteen years to reach a level where guidelines can now be suggested. Chapters of this book deal with each of the main methodological aspects of the chemistry needed to develop an effective radiopharmaceutical, namely radionuclide production, automation and metabolite analysis. A further chapter on QA/QC is written by a broadly-based expert group and is meant to provide a guideline and a base for future monographs and regulations on major PET radiopharmaceuticals of today. This book will help the increasing numbers of scientists who are now entering the field of PET to appreciate the methodological aspects that are normally addressed by chemists in relation to PET radiopharmaceuticals; it provides many useful practical guidelines and will promote early success in their own endeavours, since these will often necessarily begin by establishing chemical methodology of the kind discussed here.

This book offers a wide-ranging and up-to-date overview of the basic science underlying PET and its preclinical and clinical applications in modern medicine. In addition, it provides the reader with a sound understanding of the scientific principles and use of PET in routine practice and biomedical imaging research. The opening sections address the fundamental physics, radiation safety, CT scanning dosimetry, and dosimetry of PET radiotracers, chemistry and regulation of PET radiopharmaceuticals, with information on labeling strategies, tracer quality control, and regulation of radiopharmaceutical production in Europe and the United States. PET physics and instrumentation are then discussed, covering the basic principles of PET and PET scanning systems, hybrid PET/CT and PET/MR imaging, system calibration, acceptance testing, and quality control. Subsequent sections focus on image reconstruction, processing, and quantitation in PET and hybrid PET and on imaging artifacts and correction techniques, with particular attention to partial volume correction and motion artifacts. The book closes by examining clinical applications of PET and hybrid PET and their physiological and/or molecular basis in conjunction with technical foundations in the disciplines of oncology, cardiology and neurology, PET in pediatric malignancy and its role in radiotherapy treatment planning. Basic Science of PET Imaging will meet the needs of nuclear medicine practitioners, other radiology specialists, and trainees in these fields.

Radioisotope-based molecular imaging probes provide unprecedented insight into biochemistry and function involved in both normal and disease states of living systems, with unbiased in vivo measurement of regional radiotracer activities offering very high specificity and sensitivity. No other molecular imaging technology including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) can provide such high sensitivity and specificity at a tracer level. The applications of this technology can be very broad ranging from drug development, pharmacokinetics, clinical investigations, and finally to routine diagnostics in radiology. The design and the development of radiopharmaceuticals for molecular imaging studies using PET/MicroPET or SPECT/MicroSPECT are a unique challenge. This book is intended for a broad audience and written with the main purpose of educating the reader on various aspects including potential clinical utility, limitations of drug development, and regulatory compliance and approvals.

Personalized medicine employing patient-based tailor-made therapeutic drugs is taking over treatment paradigms in a variety of ?elds in oncology and the central nervous system. The success of such therapies is mainly dependent on ef?cacious therapeutic drugs and a selective imaging probe for identi?cation of potential responders as well as therapy monitoring for an early bene?t assessment. Molecular imaging (MI) is based on the selective and speci?c interaction of a molecular probe with a biological target which is visualized through nuclear, magnetic resonance, near infrared or other methods. Therefore it is the method of choice for patient selection and therapy monitoring as well as for speci?c e- point monitoring in modern drug development. PET (positron emitting tomography), a nuclear medical imaging modality, is ideally suited to produce three-dimensional images of various targets or processes. The rapidly increasing demand for highly selective probes for MI strongly pushes the development of new PET tracers and PET chemistry. ‘PET chemistry’ can be de?ned as the study of positron-emitting compounds regarding their synthesis, structure, composition, reactivity, nuclear properties and processes and their properties in natural and - natural environments. In practice PET chemistry is strongly in?uenced by the unique properties of the radioisotopes used (e. g. , half-life, che- cal reactivity, etc. ) and integrates scienti?c aspects of nuclear-, organic-, inorganic- and biochemistry.