LabLogic detectors and software aid PET /SPECT collaboration

8 February 2012

Two healthcare organisations in Grenoble, France, are using LabLogic’'s Laura radio-chromatography system and instrumentation sourced from the same company to enhance their ability to work closely together.

The nuclear medicine service at Grenoble Hospital has a Flow-RAM radio HPLC detector for PET and SPECT applications, while the nuclear biophysics laboratory of INSERM (France’s national institute of health and medical research) at the city'’s medical college has a Gamma-RAM radio-HPLC detector for soft and intermediate gamma emitters. The laboratory also undertakes PET and SPECT work using the dual-purpose Scan-RAM radio TLC / HPLC scanner.

Laura controls all the instruments at both locations and also gathers data ready for analysis – a single-source arrangement that all concerned find very practical.

The hospital’s main concern is with quality control of labelled PET molecules after HPLC separation, one of the two methods sanctioned by the European standards. In the long term it hopes to develop techniques that allow molecules to carry larger amounts of radioactivity.

At the medical college the laboratory is primarily a research centre carrying out traditional labelling with nuclear medicine isotopes such as Technetium-99m, various forms of iodine, and molecules used in PET such as Gallium and Indium. In addition, LabLogic’'s detectors are used to validate the radiochemical labels themselves and to check the radio-chemical control of them, both in continuous flow and on TLC strips.