A handful of nuclear medicine and molecular imaging companies are teaming up to develop a new whole-body PET/CT scanner.

Leading the charge is Quibim, an artificial intelligence and medical image processing firm with offices in California and Spain. GE Healthcare is also chipping in on the $8.9 million effort, which is partially funded and led by the Valencia Government Health Project.

The scanner will exceed current PET technologies, aiming to brandish a higher sensitivity by increasing axial coverage. This can be used to reduce radiation dose or acquisition times while retaining image quality, according to a July 20 announcement.

"We will create automatic pipelines to obtain a virtual in vivo dissection of key organs using AI, and characterize radiotracer and radiomics features," Quibim CEO and co-founder Angel Alberich-Bayarri added. "The output of this innovative collaboration will help clinicians reading a PET exam decide on which regions they must focus on to support patient diagnosis and prognosis evaluations."

Pediatric patients who require various diagnostic exams to evaluate treatment effectiveness may benefit the most, Quibim explained.

Full Body Insight, a company focused on using scintillator technologies in total-body PET, and molecular imaging specialist Oncovision, are also contributing to the project.

A prototype scanner is expected to be finished by 2023.