Musculoskeletal conditions affect 1.71 billion people worldwide. Researchers at Nationwide Children’s Hospitals developed a novel dynamic approach of PET imaging using commercially available fluorine-18-labeled radionuclides to quantify absolute measures of skeletal muscle perfusion.

By utilizing 18F-labled radionuclides instead of cyclotron production of oxygen-15 water, the methodology is widely accessible to any healthcare system possessing a PET camera by lowering the costs and limiting the need of highly trained radiopharamcy teams to produce and administer oxygen-15 water. Additionally, the methodology will quantify skeletal muscle perfusion for a wide range of muscoskeletal applications and quantify abnormalties from muscle astrophy: any vascular or muscoskeletal disease resulting from underlying ischemia to muscle, ischemic vascular disease, spinal muscular disease, Charcot-Marie-Tooth, etc.