Groundbreaking portable PET scanner moves closer to market, medical applications

Prior to the development of the wearable scanner, PET scans required animals to be immobilized or unconscious, preventing the simultaneous study of neurochemistry and conscious movement. The initial invention, dubbed RatCAP (Rat Conscious Animal PET), overcame that obstacle. This high-tech, custom-built collar made up of detectors that monitor brain chemistry enables correlation of that information with the animal’s activity in real-time.

“This device is the result of more than 10 years of work here at Brookhaven Lab and is the first in the world with this capability,” said David Schlyer, one of the Brookhaven Lab scientists who led the project. “The measurement of chemical messengers in the brain is important to understanding many different diseases and conditions such as drug addiction and movement disorders like Parkinson’s disease.”

Click here to read the full article