Medical whole-body positron emission tomography (PET), one of the most successful molecular imaging technologies, has been widely used in the fields of cancer diagnosis, cardiovascular disease diagnosis and cranial nerve study. But, on the other hand, the sensitivity, spatial resolution and signal-noise-ratio of the commercial medical whole-body PET systems still have some shortcomings and a great room for improvement. The sensitivity, spatial resolution and signal-noise-ratio of PET system are largely affected by the performances of the scintillators and the photo detectors. The design of a PET system is usually a trade-off in cost and performance. A better image quality can be achieved by optimizing and balancing the key components which affect the system performance the most without dramatically increases in cost. With the development of the scintillator, photo-detector and high speed electronic system, the performance of medical whole-body PET system would be dramatically improved. In this paper, we report current progresses and discuss future directions of the developments of technologies in medical whole-body PET system.
Humans ; Positron-Emission Tomography ; trends

Objective To investigate the antimicrobial resistance profile of the clinical isolates collected from selected hospitals across China. Methods Twenty-nine general hospitals and five children's hospitals were involved in this program. Antimicrobial susceptibility testing was carried out according to a unified protocol using Kirby-Bauer method or automated systems. Results were interpreted according to CLSI 2017 breakpoints. Results A total of 190 610 clinical isolates were collected from January to December 2017, of which gram negative organisms accounted for 70.8％ (134 951/190 610) and gram positive cocci 29.2％ (55 649/190 610). The prevalence of methicillin-resistant strains was 35.3％ in S. aureus (MRSA) and 80.3％ in coagulase negative Staphylococcus (MRCNS) on average. MR strains showed much higher resistance rates to most of the other antimicrobial agents than MS strains. However, 91.6％ of MRSA strains were still susceptible to trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole, while 86.2％ of MRCNS strains were susceptible to rifampin. No staphylococcal strains were found resistant to vancomycin. E. faecalis strains showed much lower resistance rates to most of the drugs tested (except chloramphenicol) than E. faecium. Vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus (VRE) was identified in both E. faecalis and E. faecium. The identified VRE strains were mainly vanA, vanB or vanM type based on phenotype or genotype. The proportion of PSSP or PRSP strains in the non-meningitis S.pneumoniae strains isolated from children decreased but the proportion of PISP strains increased when compared to the data of 2016. Enterobacteriaceae strains were still highly susceptible to carbapenems. Overall, less than 10％ of these strains (excluding Klebsiella spp.) were resistant to carbapenems. The prevalence of imipenem-resistant K. pneumoniae increased from 3.0％ in 2005 to 20.9％ in 2017, and meropenem-resistant K. pneumoniae increased from 2.9％ in 2005 to 24.0％ in 2017, more than 8-fold increase. About 66.7％ and 69.3％ of Acinetobacter (A. baumannii accounts for 91.5％) strains were resistant to imipenem and meropenem, respectively. Compared with the data of year 2016, P. aeruginosa strains showed decreasing resistance rate to carbapenems. Conclusions Bacterial resistance is still on the rise. It is necessary to strengthen hospital infection control and stewardship of antimicrobial agents. The communication between laboratorians and clinicians should be further improved in addition to surveillance of bacterial resistance.