How we got started
Our co-founder Rune Wiik Kristensen wondered why 15O-water, the gold standard for perfusion imaging, was not in routine clinical use. Rune, who had worked as a radiochemist in two of Denmark’s top hospitals, also wondered why cardiac PET (position emission tomography) wasn´t on the radar of most clinicians in the field, given the great success of oncological PET.
He learned that 15O-water was impractical in a clinical setting because it had such a short half-life, rendering the supply chain near impossible to scale up. Yet he also deduced that the short half-life, if controlled, would provide for reduced patient dosage and shorter scan times, increasing the feasibility of cardiac PET.
Rune decided to try to invent a device that would allow 15O-water to be produced right next to a PET scanner in a hospital, overcoming the short half-life and making 15O-water practically available.
