{"entity":{"id":"nuclear-medicine-hardware","kind":"technology","name":"Nuclear medicine and total-body PET hardware","aka":[],"tldr":"Nuclear medicine hardware means the scanners themselves: PET/CT, SPECT/CT, and new total-body PET that images the whole body at once.","summary":"Siemens Healthineers (Biograph Vision Quadra), GE HealthCare (Omni Legend), United Imaging (uEXPLORER, uMI Panorama), Canon Medical (Cartesion Prime), and Positron/Mediso occupy the PET/CT market; SPECT/CT for dosimetry from Siemens, GE, and Spectrum Dynamics. Total-body and long-axial-field-of-view PET raise sensitivity roughly 40-fold, enabling low-dose, dynamic, and multi-tracer studies relevant to theranostics.","status":"established","asOf":"2026-09-08","links":[{"label":"Badawi et al., First human imaging studies with the EXPLORER total-body PET scanner (Journal of Nuclear Medicine 2019)","url":"https://doi.org/10.2967/jnumed.119.226498"}],"tags":["supporting"],"related":[],"indications":[],"sections":[],"technologies":["pet-ct","spect","radioligand-therapy"],"targets":[],"drugs":[],"companies":["siemens-healthineers","ge-healthcare","united-imaging","canon-medical"],"institutions":[],"pathways":[],"terms":[],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":[],"keyPapers":[],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":[],"principle":"Silicon photomultiplier detector rings with time-of-flight, coupled to CT for attenuation correction; long axial coverage captures the whole body in one bed position.","strengths":["Sensitivity and speed","Dosimetry for radioligand therapy"],"limitations":["Capital cost (total-body >$10M)","Data volume","Reimbursement not tied to sensitivity"]},"route":"/technologies/nuclear-medicine-hardware/","neighbours":{"technology":[{"id":"pet","kind":"technology","name":"PET (positron emission tomography)","route":"/technologies/pet/"},{"id":"pet-ct","kind":"technology","name":"PET/CT","route":"/technologies/pet-ct/"},{"id":"radioligand-therapy","kind":"technology","name":"Radioligand therapy (beta emitters)","route":"/technologies/radioligand-therapy/"},{"id":"spect","kind":"technology","name":"SPECT & bone scan","route":"/technologies/spect/"}],"company":[{"id":"canon-medical","kind":"company","name":"Canon Medical Systems","route":"/companies/canon-medical/"},{"id":"ge-healthcare","kind":"company","name":"GE HealthCare","route":"/companies/ge-healthcare/"},{"id":"hamamatsu","kind":"company","name":"Hamamatsu Photonics","route":"/companies/hamamatsu/"},{"id":"siemens-healthineers","kind":"company","name":"Siemens Healthineers","route":"/companies/siemens-healthineers/"},{"id":"united-imaging","kind":"company","name":"United Imaging","route":"/companies/united-imaging/"}],"bottleneck":[{"id":"b-hot-lab-capacity","kind":"bottleneck","name":"Hot lab and shielded treatment room capacity","route":"/bottlenecks/b-hot-lab-capacity/"},{"id":"b-nuclear-medicine-workforce","kind":"bottleneck","name":"Nuclear medicine technologist and physicist workforce","route":"/bottlenecks/b-nuclear-medicine-workforce/"}],"idea":[{"id":"idea-total-body-pet-lower-dose-tracers","kind":"idea","name":"Using total-body PET's sensitivity to cut diagnostic tracer dose, not just scan time","route":"/ideas/idea-total-body-pet-lower-dose-tracers/"}],"isotope":[{"id":"tc-99m","kind":"isotope","name":"Technetium-99m","route":"/isotopes/tc-99m/"}],"term":[{"id":"time-of-flight-pet","kind":"term","name":"Time-of-flight (TOF) PET","route":"/terms/time-of-flight-pet/"}]}}