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DOE Pulse

A new technology to diagnose prostate cancer

DOE's Brookhaven National Laboratory and Toronto-based Hybridyne Imaging Technologies, Inc., have developed a compact gamma camera for high-resolution imaging of prostate cancer. The camera system, which won a 2009 R&D 100 Award, is a nuclear medical instrument that can localize cancer tissue in the prostate gland in detail at an early stage, which is important for the successful diagnosis of the potentially deadly disease.

Using this new technology, which is based on cadmium zinc telluride detectors, urologists can obtain better images with a smaller amount of injected radioactive tracer, compared to conventional nuclear medical systems. Also, it is an improvement over ultrasound imaging because the camera can more easily distinguish between benign and cancerous tumors.

[Diane Greenberg, 631.344.2347,
greenb@bnl.gov]