A team of researchers in the Molecular Imaging Laboratory of the Beckman Institute’s Biomedical Imaging Center has received the award for “Translational Image of the Year” in the 2012 Siemens Preclinical Image of the Year contest.

The team that created the winning image included Beckman Institute researchers: Iwona Dobrucka (Research Scientist in Molecular Imaging), Matthew Schuelke (BioE undergraduate student and American Heart Association fellow), and Wawrzyniec L. Dobrucki (Director of Molecular Imaging Laboratory). Their image was titled “Imaging of Myocardail Angiogenesis Post-Myocardial Infarction.”

The research objective of this project was to non-invasively assess myocardial angiogenesis in the onset of diabetes following myocardial infarction in relation to the structure of coronary vascular bed. To visualize formation of neovasculature, they used a novel PET radiotracer targeted at alpha-v-beta-3 integrin, synthesized and characterized in the Molecular Imaging Laboratory at the Beckman Institute.

This targeted PET-CT imaging strategy has a great potential to be translated into clinical practice and may allow for noninvasive monitoring of therapeutic interventions directed at stimulation angiogenesis early after myocardial infarction in patients.

This novel research in cardiovascular imaging has been funded by the American Heart Association Scientist Development Grant (Wawrzyniec L. Dobrucki, PI). All images have been acquired using Inveon PET-SPECT-CT system funded by the National Science Foundation MRI grant (Stephen A. Boppart, PI) currently available to University of Illinois researchers.