Intraoperative parathyroid imaging

The parathyroids are small glands located in the neck and, in patients where they are working incorrectly, the most comment treatment is surgery. As the parathyroids are small and visually appear very similar to the surrounding tissue, nuclear medicine scans are taken prior to surgery. These can identify the parathyroids by looking at the uptake ratio of two different radiopharmaceuticals - based on 99mTc and 123I. Although this helps with surgical planning it is not ideal, as anatomical landmarks will shift with patient position and during the course of surgery. Currently, radioguidance during surgery is performed with non-imaging probes. Although a small number of intraoperative imaging systems are available, these are not widely used and have not been designed with dual-isotope imaging in mind.
This project will investigate the use of a compound semiconductor detector system to perform dual-isotope imaging. The existing system is compact and has been shown to have excellent energy resolution but has never been tested for this specific application. This project will first require the creation of an accurate computer simulation based on experimental detector performance and example patient data. This simulation can then be used to investigate a range of designs for the imaging system, and once the optimum design has been chosen a prototype device will be built. The prototype will be tested with anatomical models in the lab, and potentially through preclinical or clinical trials.