Prof. Ora Israel, Director of Research Operations and Nuclear Medicine at Rambam Health Care Campus, has won the Jewish National Fund’s Samuel and Paula Elkeles Prize for 2006 in recognition of medical research excellence. The prize acknowledges Prof. Israel’s contribution to the development of hybrid imaging, one of the world’s currently most advanced functional imaging tools, which she has achieved in collaboration with her team of Rambam based clinical scientists and physicists and industry based engineers.

The subject of Prof. Israel’s research is the combining of x-ray computed tomography (the familiar CT or CAT scan) with radionuclide positron-emission tomography (PET) and single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) scans. The aim of these hybrid imaging technologies is to provide physicians with a clearer non-invasive look inside the patient’s body for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes than has previously been possible. Clinicians including, among others, oncologists, endocrinologists and cardiologists at Rambam and all over the world have implemented this new technology to detect malignant tumors in early stages and precisely target their treatment; assess the clinical significance of coronary artery disease; and diagnose and precisely locate the source of infection in patients with prolonged fever.