CTSC:MGHresources:PET Imaging Facilities

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The PET facilities occupy approximately 10,000 square feet on the main campus of the Massachusetts General Hospital with laboratories located in several buildings to allow access for both clinical research and basic research.

The Research PET Imaging Laboratory

The PET Imaging facility consists of research and clinical PET imaging areas, ancillary data collection facilities and data processing hardware and software. In the research PET area (Edwards Research Building) there are two PET devices; 1) A commercial primate PET device, primate microPET, P4, Concord Microsystems, Inc. This PET scanner utilizes unique Lutetium Oxyorthosilicate (LSO) detector technology, and includes a computer controlled bed, a laser alignment system, a dual processor computer, a rotating source holder for attenuation correction measurements, data acquisition electronics and software for data acquisition, correction, image reconstruction, image display and basic image analysis. The animal port of the system is 22 cm. It has 4 rings of detector blocks enabling volumetric data acquisition in 8 cm long object. Resolution at the center of the field of view is 1.85 mm and the system sensitivity is 650cps/μCi. 2) A super high-resolution rodent PET device is located next to the primate PET. The resolution of this device is 1.16 mm at the center, and it is the best resolution of the PET devices in the world at this moment. It is a single ring device, slice thickness is 1.3 mm and 3D-imaging data can be acquired using a computer controlled imaging table. In addition, another super high-resolution rodent PET scanner is under final test measurements. The camera suite is equipped with a dose calibrator, Na(Tl) well counter and counting electronics.

Clinical PET Facility

The clinical PET imaging laboratory is located in the White Building. In the clinical area there are three commercial PET scanners. One GE PC 4096 PE tomograph (6 mm resolution, 15 planes) is located in a 1400 sq ft suite in White 2 and consists of an imaging room, a blood counting/dispensing area and a control room/reading room. One Siemens PET system is in the similar room in White 2 and one is outside in a van. Each of the camera suites is equipped with a dose calibrator, Na(Tl) well counter and counting electronics.

PET Cyclotron/Radiochemistry Facility

The MGH cyclotron consists of a Scanditronix MC 17F Cyclotron providing 17.5 MeV protons and 8.5 MeV deuterons at 50 μA beam current. Eight automated targets and chemical precursor processing systems routinely provide the following isotopes: 11C, 13N, 15O, and 18F. The cyclotron-Radiochemistry Lab is located in approximately 2200 sq ft in the Edwards Research Building in the main MGH campus. It consists of a cyclotron vault, a high radioactivity handling lab with three hot cells, a chemistry/quality control laboratory, electronics area and a maintenance shop. Major equipment includes two robotic systems located in the HOT Cells for automated radiochemical syntheses, two analytical HPLC’s, a production HPLC, a GC/mass spectrometer, four dose calibrators, radiation monitoring equipment and various other analytical equipments. In addition to main laboratories, there are three additional chemistry laboratories dedicated to PET (total 800 sq ft) located in the Edwards Building.

Physics Research Laboratory

The MGH-PET instrumentation effort is housed in approximately 600 sq ft in the Edwards Research Building Basement. It consists of an electronics shop, imaging and office area.

Computer Facilities in the Research PET Imaging Facility: Primate PET device: PC Xeon dual processor; memory of 250 gigabytes and for additional data storage a Raid system with 1.2 Terabyte memory. The rodent PET is operated by a Windows 98 based PC with 1.5 Gbytes hard disk. For the further data processing there is 7 additional PCs, which are ethernet connected and have local Zip and CD drives.

• PC Pentium 3; OS: Windows 2000 server; Memory: 80 gigabytes
• PC Pentium 4; OS: Windows 2000 professional; Memory: 60 gigabytes
• PC Pentium 3; OS: Windows 98 second edition; Memory: 60 gigabytes
• PC Pentium 3; OS: Linux Red Hat 6.5; Memory: 40 gigabytes
• PC Pentium 3; OS: Linux Red Hat 6.5; Memory: 40 gigabytes
• PC Pentium 3; OS: Windows 98 second edition; Memory: 50 gigabytes
• PC Pentium 1; OS: Windows 98 second edition; Memory: 13 gigabytes
• Snap server; Memory: 300 gigabytes

MGH-PET Research Laboratory Office Area

The PET group has office space for scientists, fellows and staff (approximately 500 sq ft) located in the Bartlett Hall Building. The offices are equipped with personal computers, fax and copying machines. Ethernet service connects all computers to the hospital-wide network.