Evening Lecture – Belgian expertise and creativity in nuclear medicine

Belgium is at the forefront of medical applications of ionizing radiation. Pioneering discoveries and developments have put our country in the unique worldwide position that the entire value chain required for nuclear medicine, that is from target irradiation to (pre)clinical research and practice, is present and of the highest standards.
After an introduction of Rad4Med.be, the Belgian Network for Radiation Applications in Healthcare, by Frank Deconinck, two ground-breaking, challenging projects will be presented: the “Brussels RadioTheranostics Platform” by Zéna Wimana and the “Total Body Pet project” by Chris Vanhove.
The “Brussels RadioTheranostics Platform” addresses the development of a wide range of innovative radiotheranostics and their translation into the clinic. The focus will be given on both alpha and beta-emitting cancer drugs as well as on fundamental and applied aspects of radiobiology.
The “Total Body Pet project” addresses a total-body scanner, where the entire patient body is surrounded with solid-state detectors. For the same dose that is currently given, a much larger signal is collected. This enables to either drastically reduce the examination time, to perform dynamic studies or to reduce the dose by a factor of 40.