Project: Studying PHYsiology with NeXt generation Molecular imaging: SPHYNX

2018-05-01 – 2022-04-30

Abstract

The Sphynx project will build a Total body time-of-flight PET (TB-TOF-PET) scanner, with significantly improved technical capabilities, to be deployed as a research tool to study physiology in plants, large animals and humans. Where current clinical PET devices have 3 to 5 rings of detectors (plus a moveable bed) the Sphynx concept is to concatenate and integrate 20 or more detector rings, to obtain a long detector cylinder. The device will be large enough to house large subjects for single-shot imaging, will have a 20-fold improved sensitivity, fourfold longer axial field of view, and twofold better spatial resolution (compared to state of the art clinical PET). It is supported by a large scientific Flemish community of engineers, pharmacists, bioengineers, clinical and veterinary specialists
The specific domains studied within human, animal, and plant physiology  are neurology, oncology, endocrinology, gastroenterology, paediatrics, and plant ecophysiology.Results from Sphynx may lead to new clinical therapies (drugs, cellular therapy, radiotherapy, surgical procedures, transplantation strategies, …)and solutions for agriculture, forestry and ecosystem management.