Park pursues new high-energy technique

Park Medical earned a reputation as a pioneer in digital gammacamera design when it entered the market in 1993 with its Isocamline of systems. This year, the Lachine, Quebec, vendor intendsto reinforce its stature as an engineering innovator with a radicallydifferent approach to high-energy radioisotope imaging.

With the rest of the industry embracing coincidence imagingof FDG-SPECT, Park has chosen to cast its lot with modified codedaperture technology (MCAT), according to CEO Richard Mullen. MCATwas developed by Dr. Harry Barratt at the University of Arizonain Tucson in the 1980s, but was set aside as impractical untilPark's chief scientist, Daniel Gagnon, took a second look at thetechnology.

The technique promises 10-fold improvement in sensitivity anda two-fold improvement in resolution over today's best gamma cameras,Mullen said. MCAT is less expensive than coincidence detectionand works with standard radiopharmaceutical and high-energy radioisotopes.Park will show phantom images produced with this investigationaltechnology.

The company will also feature a new infrared sensitivity contouringdevice available with its Isocam gamma cameras. Software enhancementson Park's Sun UltraSparc workstation will be emphasized as well.