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Pediatric Brain Tumor Consortium Study
The Pediatric Brain Tumor Consortium (PBTC), which was formed by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in 1999, is devoted to the study of correlative tumor biology and new therapies for primary CNS tumors of childhood. PET imaging is incorporated into many PBTC protocols, with approximately 450 PET scans having been done during the past 10 years. Under the guidance of Dr. Tina Young Pouissant, Director of the PBTC's Neuro-Imaging Center, the group evaluates new treatment response criteria and neuro-imaging methods to understand regional brain effects. Dr. Fred Fahey (Past-President, SNMMI) works closely with her on these important projects. During the past 10 years, the 12 study institutions listed below have performed two different phantom QC studies to better evaluate the quality of the PET study data collected, and published a paper (Med. Phys. 37(7), July 2010).
- Children’s National Medical Center, Washington, DC
- Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC
- Children’s Hospital Boston, Boston, MA
- Children’s Hospital Pittsburgh/UPMC, Pittsburgh, PA
- St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis, TN
- Texas Children’s Hospital at Baylor, Houston, TX
- NIH PET Center, Bethesda, MD
- Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, Chicago, IL
- Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, Cincinnati, OH
- Childrens Hospital Los Angeles/USC, Los Angeles, CA
- Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY
- Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford, Palo Alto, CA
The CTN is collaborating with the PBTC Neuro-Imaging Center to see how well the sites, with varying levels of physicist support and different makes and models of scanners, image the CTNs unique brain phantom and analyze the results. Images from two different acquisition times: a shorter time interval to obtain clinical parameters and a longer time interval for evaluating resolution and uniformity. Images are uploaded to the FDA-approved Keosys Imagys clinical trials imaging workstation already set up in the SNMMI home office (Reston, Va). It is anticipated that all study sites will have completed the validations by the end of 2014.
