# First Human Imaging Studies with the EXPLORER Total-Body PET Scanner

Source: https://onco.cc/key-papers/paper-badawi-j-nucl-med/  
OnCo record `paper-badawi-j-nucl-med` (Key paper). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Paper cited by one technology page, indexed on Europe PMC as PubMed record 30733314 and published in Journal of Nuclear Medicine; the citing page links this DOI, which is how the record was matched.

## Summary

Within the EXPLORER Consortium, the construction of the world's first total-body PET/CT scanner has recently been completed. The 194-cm axial field of view of the EXPLORER PET/CT scanner is sufficient to cover, for the first time, the entire human adult body in a single acquisition in more than 99% of the population and allows total-body pharmacokinetic studies with frame durations as short as 1 s. The large increase in sensitivity arising from total-body coverage as well as increased solid angle for detection at any point within the body allows whole-body 18 F-FDG PET studies to be acquired with unprecedented count density, improving the signal-to-noise ratio of the resulting images. Alternatively, the sensitivity gain can be used to acquire diagnostic PET images with very small amounts of activity in the field of view (25 MBq, 0.7 mCi or less), with very short acquisition times (∼1 min or less) or at later time points after the tracer's administration. We report here on the first human imaging studies on the EXPLORER scanner using a range of different protocols that provide initial evidence in support of these claims. These case studies provide the foundation for future carefully controlled trials to quantitatively evaluate the improvements possible through total-body PET imaging.

Indexed on Europe PMC as PubMed record 30733314 (DOI 10.2967/jnumed.119.226498). Matched by DOI alone: one technology page cites this DOI among its external links (the pages are listed under Related), and this page was written so that the citation resolves inside OnCo. No figure has been checked by an editor.

## Fields

- Kind: Key paper
- Last checked: 2026-09-22
- Tags: europepmc-ingest
- Journal: Journal of Nuclear Medicine
- Year: 2019
- DOI: 10.2967/jnumed.119.226498
- Authors: Badawi RD, Shi H, Hu P, et al.
- What it means: One technology page on OnCo cites this paper by its DOI; this record gives the citation a page of its own so a reader can follow it without leaving OnCo. Read the abstract above alongside the citing page listed under Related; the record was created automatically from the Europe PMC entry and its figures have not been checked by hand.
- Caveats: Matched to the citing OnCo records by DOI alone; the summary reproduces the Europe PMC abstract and no figure has been verified against the full paper.

## Sources

- J Nucl Med 2019: https://doi.org/10.2967/jnumed.119.226498
- PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30733314/
- Europe PMC: https://europepmc.org/article/MED/30733314

## Connected records

- technologies: [Nuclear medicine and total-body PET hardware](https://onco.cc/technologies/nuclear-medicine-hardware/)
- journals: [Journal of Nuclear Medicine](https://onco.cc/journals/journal-of-nuclear-medicine/)

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