It has been said that all started at one point. That after a roar, it was let light to be it and everything began. This could sound like the first verses of many dogmatic books, however, it describes very well how things became after the Big Bang.
It’s incredible how a biped primate in just 6000 years of known-history, could actually manipulate many of this forces that sang in the overture of the universe around 13 billion years ago (13.000.000.000 years or 13Gyr).
Who could even imagine that the shyest and slippery of these dancers, would become the star of a technological innovation: Positron Emission Tomography (PET).
Positrons are tinier particles than the atoms (fundamental particles) that basically, as they are so shy, they avoid being seen within the universe. Therefore, an energetic drum roll is needed to rush them into the scene.
Nevertheless, positrons’ fiancées, the electrons, are so jealous that at first sight they jump and wrap the poor positrons that tight that annihilate them before they choose another one. Prior to disappear, positrons drop a pair of tears (photons) that are seen from one and other side of the stage. Always, every tragedy calls annoying paparazzi, who want to be as near as possible. Thus, wherever there are a high amount of annihilations, these troublesome guys (cancer cells) can be found.
Last week we had the chance to see the machine capable of that energetic drum roll needed to produce positrons: accelerator (the world biggest accelerators). This machine lays on the first floor of the PET Center, in a special designed room with reinforced concrete walls of 2m thick. This thickness ensure no radiation leak that could poison the workers. Obviously, we spent a short time inside that 6m x 6m x 3m room. The Dokkyo PET Center is opened for maintenance twice a year.
With this technology, unimaginable before WWII, it is possible to inject positron-enriched sugar (18-FDG) to cancer-suspected and/or metastasis-suspected patients and treatment-response follow-up. This special sugar is rapidly ingested by cancer cells, which accumulates and the increased amount of positrons (than normal at rest cells) is registered by PET scan. This scanned image combined to CT scan images reproduces the location and activity of certain types of cancer and their metastasis in a computer workstation.
**This figure shows the virtual reconstruction of a colon cancer (lilac-colored) surrounded by adjacent bony and vascular structures. This newly developed imaging technique helps to clarify and plan the better approach during complete tumor and invaded lymph nodes resection surgery.
