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A photograph of someone having a PET scan

The new PET (Positron Emission Tomography) scanner housed in the Nuclear Medicine suite of the Dana Building.

PET scanner opens a window on cancer

The peacefulness of the procedure — the required stillness, the almost imperceptible motion of the machinery — makes it seem like a yoga exercise with a high-tech twist.

A patient sits as a solution of a radioactively labeled, sugar-like substance passes into her veins. She lies down, stirring as little as possible for 45 minutes as the mixture is carried throughout her bloodstream. Then, moving to a narrow pallet, she again reclines, face-up, for about an hour, as the pallet slides her slowly through the opening of a white machine the size of a small closet. Soft music is piped into the room. The central portion of the ceiling is recessed and painted blue with white clouds to resemble a skylight.

The result of this deliberate tranquility and technological wizardry is something astonishing: images and data that show not only where individual tumors are located, but also how aggressive and fast-growing they are.

The pictures are produced by a PET (Positron Emission Tomography) scanner, a device that is gradually becoming the instrument of choice for diagnosing a variety of cancers. Using state-of-the-art technology to "read" the activity of living cells, PET scanners enable doctors to determine the precise extent of cancer within the body as well as whether individual tumors are benign or malignant.

Last fall, Dana-Farber became only the second hospital in New England (after Massachusetts General Hospital) to install a PET scanner for its patients — a $2.3 million piece of machinery housed in the Nuclear Medicine suite of the Dana building.

"The scanner adds a new dimension to our ability to diagnose cancer and determine if and where it has spread," says Annick Van den Abbeele, M.D., director of Nuclear Medicine. "It complements the diagnostic images provided by MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) and CT (computed tomography) scanners by providing functional information about tumors."

Paths of Progress, Winter/Spring 2000

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