The Nuclear Medicine Research Infrastructure (NuMeRI) Node for Infection Imaging (NII) has received an international accreditation by EANM Research Ltd (EARL) as a PET-CT Centre of Excellence (CoE). In addition to meeting stringent quality checks for quantitative PET-CT research, this accreditation ensures that the data acquired on the NII scanner is comparable to that acquired at other EARL-accredited facilities across the world. The NII is only the second EARL-accredited facility in Africa, the other being the neighbouring Western Cape Academic PET/CT Centre at Tygerberg Hospital.

The European Association of Nuclear Medicine (EANM) uses EARL as an initiative to promote multicentre nuclear medicine and research. EARL´s guidelines and specifications are based on imaging experts of worldwide reputation with a global leading role in PET/CT. Users of a facility with an EARL accreditation can be sure of quality in daily clinical practice as well as reliability of research work performed for multicentre trials. The endorsement ensures accurate, reproducible quantitative assessment by standardisation of methods relating to patient preparation, scan acquisition, image processing and analysis.  

The NII PET-CT facility is hosted by Stellenbosch University's Central Analytical Facilities and is based at Tygerberg Hospital. It has been in operation since November 2019.

For more information, please contact:

Dr Alex Doruyter

doruyter@sun.ac.za

Photo in header:

From left to right: Dr Dimitri Erasmus, Prof Eugene Cloete, Prof Gary Stevens, Dr Daniel Adams, Dr Beth Engelbrecht, Dr Alex Doruyter, Prof Jimmy Volmink, Mr Charles Mokonoto and Prof Nico Gey van Pittius.

Photos by Stefan Els