Max
Planck Innovation and PerkinElmer conclude a licensing agreement for highly
efficient detectors for medical technology
 | | Chip with insight: silicon photomultipliers could help to locate tumours in the body more accurately - without the disadvantages and side effects of other procedures. Credit: MPI for Physics / Masahiro Teshima Image: MPI for Physics / Masahiro Teshima |
In future, it will be possible to detect malignant tumors more rapidly and
more reliably - with instruments that combine magnetic resonance tomography
and positron emission tomography, two conventional methods in medical diagnostics.
The US company PerkinElmer Inc. develops detectors for such instruments, and
will be using detector technology developed by astronomers at the Max Planck
Institute of Physics for this application. Max Planck Innovation has now concluded
a licensing agreement with PerkinElmer that grants the company the exclusive
right to use these silicon photomultipliers (SiPM).
Medical diagnosis is often a matter of weighing up the options. This begins
with the selection of the right method: Although magnetic resonance tomography
(MRT) supplies pinpoint sharp images of organs, bones and connective tissue,
it provides no information on the metabolic activity in individual regions.
An MRT is therefore not much use when looking for tumors which reveal themselves
by their particularly high sugar metabolism. But this is exactly what is detected
by positron-emission tomography (PET), although it does not disclose the exact
locations of the active cells. Computer tomography, on the other hand, solves
this dilemma, but involves additional X-ray exposure for patients.
Detectors used by the Max Planck physicists to detect cosmic gamma radiation
are now facilitating the combination of PET and MRT in one instrument. The detectors
that positron-emission tomographs normally employ to count photons are not suitable
for such a combination because the MRT's strong magnetic field thwarts the detection
of photons. Consequently, the first integrated PE and MR tomographs operate
with the aid of avalanche photodiodes (APD). These have a much lower sensitivity,
are slower and consume more power than the silicon photomultipliers which were
originally developed by Russian researchers at the Moscow State Engineering
Physics Institute, and have finally been developed further for practical applications
by the group of Max Planck researchers headed by Masahiro Teshima and Razmik
Mirzoyan.
"We are convinced that the SiPM technology will be very useful in medicine
and environmental technology," says Michael Ersoni, Vice President of PerkinElmer
and General Manager of the global detection business. PerkinElmer and Max Planck
Innovation GmbH, the technology transfer company of the Max Planck Society,
have concluded an exclusive licensing agreement for the silicon photomultipliers.
However, these highly sensitive detectors could be used wherever it is important
to detect the minutest quantities of light. In addition to the PET diagnostic
application, Ersoni gives analytical fluorescence measurements as a further
example.
"PerkinElmer is the world's leading company for photodetectors and therefore
the ideal industrial partner to enable us to introduce the silicon photomultipliers
into medical applications and analytical applications for the environment,"
says Bernd Ctortecka, patent and licensing manager at Max Planck Innovation:
"The global operator commands a strong market position, the necessary development
capacity and the experience to introduce the technology into a market that is
currently undergoing rapid development."
Posted August 20th, 2009
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