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Now, given the go-ahead by the FDA, CTI will soon be producing an advanced version of the Pittsburgh prototype. Larson, who has ordered a machine for Sloan-Kettering's pet center, predicts that the PET/CT will "improve clinical management of patients and cut the overall time of their imaging in half, from about one hour for a whole body survey to about a half hour."
Even apart, PET and CT scanners are triumphs of technology, devices that have saved countless lives, prolonged others, and often made many exploratory operations unnecessary. Yet each has limitations that can lead to uncertainties in diagnosis. By successfully combining the two technologies, Ronald Nutt and David Townsend have eliminated those uncertainties and provided medicine with a powerful new diagnostic tool.