MIAMI—Siemens Molecular Imaging announced that its syngo.PET Amyloid Plaque neurology quantification software for use in Alzheimer's disease imaging has been cleared by the FDA. Also, Siemens Molecular Imaging’s preclinical team launched a low-dose CT option for Inveon CT. The announcements were made at the annual meeting of the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI).

The quantification software assists physicians in the evaluation of beta-amyloid plaque burden in PET/CT amyloid imaging exams from the Siemens Biograph mCT PET/CT scanner by calculating uptake ratios of the amyloid imaging biomarker Amyvid (Eli Lilly) in the brain. It works by taking a patient’s PET amyloid exam and registering it against a reference model of a PET amyloid brain. This enables the physician reading the exam to quantify standard uptake value (SUV) ratios. It is modeled on the Fleisher Method that identifies six optimal zones to evaluate pathological levels of amyloid plaque burden measured at autopsy.

The software thus identifies areas of the image in which amyloid uptake in the interlaced white and gray matter of the brain is normal and abnormal (low), which can be challenging to interpret based on visual assessment alone. Based on a SUV ratio score greater than 1.17, it is summized the patient’s plaque burden indicates the presence of Alzheimer’s disease. Combined with visual assessment, these capabilities may give physicians useful information in analyzing amyloid-PET scans, Siemens said. Syngo.PET amyloid software deliveries begin in July.

Also, the new option for the Inveon CT allows researchers to perform longitudinal small animal imag­ing studies with a 20-fold reduction in delivered CT dose (compared with standard protocols), Siemens said. The low-dose CT option for Inveon CT offers improvements to sensitivity and enables a reduction in CT expo­sure times that results in decreased delivered dose. Combined with opti­mized low-dose CT protocols, the result­ing images display high signal-to-noise ratios with minimal degradation of reso­lution.