Mobile PET scans make way to Maine

PORTLAND – Tests known as PET scans, which help doctors pinpoint where diseases have spread, will show up in Maine for the first time if proposals to operate mobile units and a hospital center are approved.

Researchers have used PET scans, which cost about $2,000, since the 1970s, and the technology has expanded into patient care in a significant way during the past few years.

The scan enables doctors to closely pinpoint tumors and track where a cancer has spread, so they are better able to determine whether surgery, radiation or chemotherapy is the best treatment.

PET scans can, for example, detect colon cancer with 95 percent accuracy. CT scans, by comparison, have an accuracy rate of 68 percent. PET scans also can reveal much earlier whether cancer has spread.

Now, with the cost of the tests coming down and equipment neede for PET scans more readily available, several hospitals and medical technology companies want to bring PET scans to Maine for the first time.

With backing from several Maine hospitals, New England Molecular Imaging of Portsmouth, N.H., is seeking state approval to operate a mobile PET scan unit that would travel from town to town.

NEMI has commitments from several Maine hospitals that would like to use it. They include Mercy Hospital in Portland, St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center in Lewiston, Waldo County General Hospital in Belfast, York Hospital, St. Joseph Hospital in Bangor and Parkview Memorial Hospital in Brunswick.

Alliance Imaging Inc. of Berlin, Conn., and a group called Insight/Premier have filed letters of intent to bring similar mobile facilities to the state.

In Bangor, Eastern Maine Medical Center has filed a letter of intent with the state to start its own PET center.

MaineHealth in Portland is negotiating with at least one of the groups hoping to bring mobile PET imaging to Maine.

Positron emission tomography is a nuclear-medicine technique that uses radiation to measure biochemical reactions. While CT and MRI scans produce anatomical images, PET scans show what’s going on in the body metabolically.

PET scans also have applications in neurology and cardiac care. They sometimes can uncover early signs of Alzheimer’s disease, years before other diagnostic methods can spot it.

“As a radiologist, I think this is one of the best-kept imaging secrets right now,” said Dr. Peter Conti, director of the PET Imaging Science Center at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, and president of the Institute for Clinical PET.

“I really believe that in certain groups of patients, particularly the cancer patient population, this has tremendous application in terms of patient management and diagnosis,” said Conti.