In positron emission tomography, as much as 40% of positron annihilation occurs through the production of positronium atoms inside the patient’s body. The decay of these positronium atoms is sensitive to metabolism and could provide information about disease progression. New research is needed to take full advantage of what positronium decays reveal.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Relevant articles
Open Access articles citing this article.
-
Discrete symmetries tested at 10−4 precision using linear polarization of photons from positronium annihilations
Nature Communications Open Access 02 January 2024
-
Inverse shielding and mutual exclusion for PET-MR hybrid imaging concerning induced positronium hyperfine splits radiations
Scientific Reports Open Access 22 November 2023
-
3D melanoma spheroid model for the development of positronium biomarkers
Scientific Reports Open Access 11 May 2023
Access options
Access Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journals
Get Nature+, our best-value online-access subscription
$29.99 / 30 days
cancel any time
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 digital issues and online access to articles
$99.00 per year
only $8.25 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on Springer Link
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
References
Moskal, P. et al. Feasibility study of the positronium imaging with the J-PET tomograph. Phys. Med. Biol. 64, 055017 (2019).
Jasinska, B. et al. Human tissues investigation using PALS technique. Acta Phys. Pol. B 48, 1737 (2017).
Kilburn, D. et al. Organization and mobility of water in amorphous and crystalline trehalose. Nat. Mater. 5, 632–635 (2006).
Badawi, R. D. et al. First human imaging studies with the EXPLORER total-body PET scanner. J. Nucl. Med. 60, 299–303 (2019).
Axpe, E. et al. Detection of atomic scale changes in the free volume void size of three-dimensional colorectal cancer cell culture using positron annihilation lifetime spectroscopy. PLOS ONE 9, e83838 (2014).
Cassidy, D. B. Experimental progress in positronium laser physics. Eur. Phys. D 72, 53 (2018).
Bass, S. D. QED and fundamental symmetries in positronium decays. Preprint in arXiv https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.01355 (2019).
Acknowledgements
We thank Agnieszka Kaminska and Ewelina Kubicz for help with the figure. This research is supported by the Foundation for Polish Science through the TEAM/2017-4/39 programme, the National Science Centre of Poland through grant no. 2016/21/B/ ST2/01222 and the Polish Ministry for Science and Higher Education through grant no. 7150/E-338/SPUB/2017/1.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding authors
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Moskal, P., Jasińska, B., Stępień, E.Ł. et al. Positronium in medicine and biology. Nat Rev Phys 1, 527–529 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-019-0078-7
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-019-0078-7
This article is cited by
-
Discrete symmetries tested at 10−4 precision using linear polarization of photons from positronium annihilations
Nature Communications (2024)
-
Developing a novel positronium biomarker for cardiac myxoma imaging
EJNMMI Physics (2023)
-
Inverse shielding and mutual exclusion for PET-MR hybrid imaging concerning induced positronium hyperfine splits radiations
Scientific Reports (2023)
-
3D melanoma spheroid model for the development of positronium biomarkers
Scientific Reports (2023)
-
Efficiency determination of J-PET: first plastic scintillators-based PET scanner
EJNMMI Physics (2023)
