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radiopharmaceutical nuclear

Tom K. Lewellen, PhD, emeritus professor of radiology and electrical engineering at the University of Washington (Seattle), received the Edward J. Hoffman Memorial Award, which is presented by the SNMMI Computer and Instrumentation Council. The award was established to recognize scientists in the field of nuclear medicine for their service and devotion to research and development of nuclear medicine instrumentation and to educating and training the next generation of scientists. Lewellen has been involved in all aspects of clinical nuclear medicine instrumentation and optimization of such devices. The physics group he established at the University of Washington works in hardware design, software engineering, image reconstruction algorithm development, image quality assessment, and simulation tools for system design and optimization.

Kuhl-Lassen Lecture Award
On June 11, Hank Kung, PhD, accepted the Kuhl-Lassen Lecture Award for Research in Brain Imaging from the SNMMI Brain Imaging Council. The award honors a scientist who has made significant contributions to the field of functional brain imaging using SPECT and PET. Kung's lecture at the award presentation was on "Amyloid plaque imaging probes: From bench to clinic." Kung is a professor in the departments of Radiology and Pharmacology at the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia). He has received many awards, including the Springer Award for the Best Paper in Basic Science, the NIH Jacob K. Javits Award for Neuroscience, the SNMMI Paul C. Aebersold Award, and the Distinguished Investigator Award from the Academy of Radiology Research. He has authored or coauthored more than 300 original articles in radiopharmaceutical chemistry, nuclear medicine, and medicinal chemistry.

Hermann Blumgart Award
Robert Beanlands, MD, Goldfarb Research chair and chief of cardiac imaging at the University of Ottawa (Ontario) Heart Institute and founding director of the National Cardiac PET Centre, was selected by the SNMMI Cardiovascular Council to receive the Hermann Blumgart Award. The award recognizes a key contributor to the science of nuclear cardiology who is also an advocate for the field through involvement with the society's research and educational activities. Beanlands is a career investigator at the Heart and Stroke Foundation-Ontario and an international leader in cardiovascular nuclear imaging, focusing on the evaluation of metabolic and cellular function in cardiovascular disease and responses to therapy.

Tom Miller Memorial Award
George Segall, MD, and Arturo Chiti, MD, were the recipients of this year's Tom Miller Memorial Award, given by the SNMMI Academic Council. The recipients presented "Nuclear medicine training in the era of hybrid imaging" at the 2013 Annual Meeting. Segall is chief of the nuclear medicine service at the Department of Veterans' Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System (CA) and professor of radiology at Stanford University (CA). He has held numerous posts at SNMMI, including as president, a member of the board of directors, chair of the Commission on Education, and president of the PET Center of Excellence.
Chiti is director of the Nuclear Medicine Department at the Humanitas Clinical and Research Center (Rozzano, Italy) and is the 2013-2014 president-elect for the European Association of Nuclear Medicine (EANM). He has held several leadership positions within EANM and played an active role in development of joint EANM/SNMMI guidelines.

SNMMI-TS Outstanding Educator Award
Pamela S. Alderman, BSRS, CNMT, was awarded the SNMMI-TS Presidential Distinguished Service Award. With nearly 40 years of experience, she served as a staff technologist at multiple hospitals before becoming a clinical coordinator and then program director for the Baylor University Medical Center (Dallas, TX) nuclear medicine technology program. She serves on the SNMMI-TS Educators Task Force and is a past cochair of the Transition Task Force and past chair of the Educator's Committee.

Presidential Distinguished Service Award
The 2013 SNMMI-TS Presidential Distinguished Service Award was presented to Cynae Derose, CNMT, and Lynne T. Roy, MBA, CNMT. Derose is pursuing a masters in Health Policy from Northwestern University (Chicago, IL) as well as a masters in Health Law from Loyola University (Chicago). An SNMMI-TS member since 2003, she has been an active participant in the Central Chapter, where she is 2013 president.
Roy is currently the director of imaging at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center (Los Angeles, CA). She is a past president of the SNMMI-TS and currently serves as chair of the SNMMI-TS Advocacy Committee and chair of the University Health Consortium Imaging Council.

SNMMI-TS President's Plaque
Brenda J. King, CNMT, was awarded the SNMMI-TS president's plaque and gavel for her service as 2012-2013 president. King is the owner of BJ King & Associates, LLC (Carson, CA), a company that offers advanced imaging accreditation consultation to hospitals and private practice imaging centers. She has served in many positions in SNMMI-TS, most recently as president, speaker for the National Council of Representatives, in the SNMMI House of Delegates, and on the SNMMI-TS Executive Board, as well as on the SNMMI Nominating Committee, Committee on Councils, Committee on Chapters and the SNMMI-TS Physician-Technologist Task Force.
Sincalide is Temporarily Unavailable-Again B racco Diagnostics, Inc. announced in June that Kinevac (sincalide) production had been halted and that the product will not be available for at least 2 months. Kinevac is the only intravenous cholecystogogue drug approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to stimulate gallbladder contraction. It is thus useful for calculation of gallbladder ejection fraction (GBEF) to diagnose chronic acalculous gallbladder disease. Sincalide was last unavailable in 2002 (1) and remained unavailable for about 6 months.
During Kinevac shortages pharmacy-compounded sincalide preparations have been employed as an alternative. Compounding pharmacies are regulated by states, and their regulation is based on the practice of pharmacy. These compounded drugs are not FDA approved. Some states or hospitals may no longer support this alternative method of obtaining drugs because of recent deaths reported from fungal sepsis after intrathecal administration of methylprednisolone preparations obtained from a state-regulated compounding pharmacy in Massachusetts (2). Quality control is a potential issue. In hospital settings, caution should be employed when considering the use of compounded sincalide preparations obtained from outside compounding pharmacies (3). Given these new concerns, the following options may be more appropriate.
Fatty meals can serve as an alternative method to stimulate gallbladder contraction. Although "physiologic," their effectiveness and accurate quantification are dependent on normal gastric emptying. Fatty meals stimulate endogenous cholecystokinin in the proximal small bowel. A delay in gastric emptying will result in a delay in gallbladder emptying and inaccurate quantification of GBEF during the 60-minute study.
In patients who have been fasting for more than 24 hours, fatty meals do not solve the problem of emptying the gallbladder to expel the viscous bile that might prevent HIDA radiotracer entry. However, fatty meals can be used as an alternative approach, particularly in patients referred for evaluation of possible chronic acalculous gallbladder disease and for calculating GBEF.
Most fatty meals (e.g., French fries) have not been standardized and do not have validated normal values. A few publications have investigated orally administered foods with standardized protocols and established normal values. These include whole milk (250 cc), Ensure Plus (8 oz), and corn oil emulsion (30 mL) (4)(5)(6). The lower ranges of normal for GBEF at 60 minutes for the 3 different methods were reported to be 44 %, 33%, and 20%, respectively. It is hoped that Kinevac will again be available in the near future.