When Homer Macapinlac, MD, is asked if he thinks the future of breast imaging rests on hybrid technologies, he answers emphatically: “Once you drive a Lexus, you can’t go back to a [Toyota] Camry…it’s like night and day.” Macapinlac, Professor and Chairman of Nuclear Imaging at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, TX, USA, has been conducting lymphoscintigraphy research on Siemens Symbia TruePoint SPECT·CT, (single photon emission computed tomographycomputed tomography) used for pretreatment planning in breast sentinel lymph node excision. MD Anderson Cancer Center was one of the first facilities that acquired the hybrid system.

SPECT-ACULAR-CT: offering a more precise localization of nodes
“What’s novel about it is that you perform two exams in the same sitting – we can acquire the CT scan right after the SPECT and fuse the image,” he explains. “The result is more precise localization of the node, which CT alone does not offer. Here, we call it ‘SPECT-ACULAR-CT.’” Symbia accelerates workflow in several ways, according to Macapinlac. Eliminating multiple sittings is a significant time saver. Offering surgeons the ability to see the lymph nodes draining on the fused image gives them added anatomic information and helps them find the lymph nodes faster; surgery becomes easier to perform, time in surgery is shortened, and patients spend less time under anesthesia. Even though Macapinlac is impressed by early results, he emphasizes that before Symbia is widely adopted for breast lymphoscintigraphy SPECT·CT imaging, further research is imperative.