UCLH introduces automated rubidium generator infusion system for cardiac PET
The nuclear medicine department at University College London Hospitals has updated its rubidium infusion system (RUBY-FILL) for cardiac PET imaging. A rapidly emerging and non-invasive test, cardiac PET can quickly and accurately diagnose heart disease, as well as measure myocardial perfusion, function and blood flow at rest and stress in one procedure.
The RUBY-FILL system is said to be a significant improvement over the previous system. It has a touch screen and automated safety alerts that help minimise the risk of strontium breakthrough exposure. The system denies access to patient infusion control if daily quality control is not completed.
The RUBY-FILL system offers two modes of patient infusion (see charts); a bolus using constant flow or constant time and a constant activity. With the constant activity infusion, the system delivers the dose in a square wave infusion profile. It delivers a reproducible infusion delivery profile regardless of the age of the rubidium generator and improves myocardial blood flow quantification. Another improvement is switching from fixed dose to weight-based dosing of rubidium radioactivity, resulting in significantly reduced radiation exposure to patients. It also has a post-saline infusion used to flush rubidium activity out of the patient line at the end of elution, thus increasing the activity delivered to the heart two-fold.
The infusion system uses the RUBY-FILL rubidium-82 generator and has a shelf life of 60 days. The generator produces the radioactive tracer Rb-82 that has a short half-life of 75 seconds. Because of the short half-life of the tracer, the myocardial perfusion scan (rest and stress scan) can be performed in less than 20 minutes.
“We are delighted with the automated rubidium generator infusion system; it is easy to operate. Our consultants have been delighted with the fantastic quality of myocardial perfusion images,” said the team. “Our initial assessment has shown reduction of dose to patients, without compromising image quality, and radiation exposure to staff was significantly reduced when switching to an automated infusion system.”
Lead picture: Head physicist John Dickson, Jubilant Draximage manager Chad Baida, principal physicist Sarah Quaid, senior technologist Naizil Pereira, CT superintendent Raymond Endozo, general manager Rayjanah Allie and Jubilant Draximage clinical applications specialist Adam Rybczynski.
Published on page 9 of the June 2022 issue of RAD Magazine.
