FMTVDM Patent: Observations, Quantification & The Future of Medicine.

As a physicist I am used to thinking in terms of absolute measurements and probabilities - i.e. nothing is absolute.

While I understand that non-physicists can find this dichotomy unsettling, as Heisenburg first explained in 1927, the more you insist upon defining something absolutely, the more your interaction will alter what you are attempting to observe and define.

Rather than taking you down that rabbit hole, my focus on this section is to introduce you to the method I patented in 2017. The Fleming Method for tissue and vascular differentiation and metabolism (FMTVDM) using same state single or sequential quantification comparisons. US9566037B2.

This patent evolved from the work I was carrying out in the 1990s, some of which I shared with you on the last page.

When I left academia (a scientist never really leaves academia) in 1992, I entered private practice, combining both clinical medicine and research.

By 1994 I have developed and began discussing the ITIRD [https://www.flemingmethod.com/] and was looking for a method to quantitatively measure in contrast to simply looking at qualitative images, which I frequently refer to as pretty pictures.

The OBSERVATION OF SEEING PRETTY PICTURES is plagued with the inability of any given physician, or person in general, to see what was before their eyes. People see what they expect to see (including the Harvard CT experiment, the Gorilla experiment, et cetera) as well as hear what they expect to hear (a reference to my work in intelligence and psychology testing conducted as a graduate experimental psychology student).

In 1999, the same company that owned Sestamibi was trying to get physicians in Omaha, Nebraska, to use the isotope. Omaha was and remains a nuclear imaging void in comparison to many other areas of the USA.

Specifically, Big Pharma wanted Sestamibi to be used for breast cancer imaging. My training in nuclear imaging was broad enough that I was not only qualified to conduct nuclear imaging of the heart, but any other part of the body.

The office I established was called The Fleming Heart & Health Institute. While I was not looking to begin imaging women for breast cancer, I could see the potential benefit in doing so. I agreed to do breast cancer imaging with Sestamibi, if I could figure out a way of not increasing patients radiation exposure.

In other words, there would need to be a protocol for me to use that would allow me to do both heart and breast cancer imaging at the same time.

I subsequently developed an imaging protocol that would allow me to carry out my heart imaging and breast cancer imaging without giving more radiation to the women. To do this would require that I give the pharmacologic stressor followed by the immediate imaging of the women's breasts, followed by the standard heart image at 60-minutes (1-hour after giving the Sestamibi).

According to Big Pharma, this 1-hour delay was required to provide time for the Sestamibi to accumulate in the heart. [This was also the selling point of Sestamibi - nuclear technologists didn't need to rush to do the heart images after giving Sestamibi. Unlike Teboroxime which required the technologist to rush to put the patient under the SPECT imaging camera within minutes. This more relaxed time schedule was favored by the busy technologists and Sestamibi became the preferred isotope.

Financially a win-win and with the Big Pharma argument that Sestamibi didn't move around (redistribute) once in the heart, this meant the patient needed a second dose of Sestamibi for the rest (heart damage) imaging part of the study.

At the time, I didn't appreciate what I would learn by adding the breast cancer images to the protocol; but, that would soon become apparent.

Big Pharma was on hand during the first study. The breast cancer image appeared to show an artifact on the images when they were displayed in black and white - the method being used at the time for the breast cancer images (given the trade name of Miraluma).

The representative from the company was afraid this would make Sestamibi (aka Miraluma for billing purposes) look bad if someone was told they had breast cancer when it was just an artifact. I was then asked if I would like their expert on the east coast read the image given their experience.

I asked why I would want someone else to read an image that I had obtained and then asked the representative if they had ever seen the Miraluma images in color. The answer was no. No one had ever thought about that. So I switched the images to blue-green, explaining that this is the wavelength of light that people are most sensitive to. As a result, the artifact disappeared.

Thus, we were on our way.

While doing the combination heart disease and breast cancer imaging, I was quantifying the amount of radiation I was seeing coming from the patient.

During the next few months to years, I would make several important discoveries; discoveries that should have been - if patient care was important - welcomed; but instead, were greeted with anger and contempt by Big Pharma. [https://www.flemingmethod.com/about]

1) Early imaging of the breast also showed early imaging of the heart. These heart images, obtained 5-10 minutes after the Sestamibi had been given, where showing the isotope already showing up in the heart unless there area of the heart had "critical" heart disease.

2) These early images of the heart were different from the 1-hour images. The 1-hour images, in instances of severe and critical coronary artery disease, appeared "normal" in many instances at 1-hour resulting in people with "critical" heart disease being missed using the Big Pharma approach. In patients with no heart disease, the 5-minute and 60-minute images were almost identical. [The only difference being the decay of the Tc-99m isotope that occurred during the 55-minute interval.]

3) The early images also showed an activated "thymus" gland in instances where people had Bacterially Aggravated Atherosclerosis. According to textbooks, the thymus gland is inactive after adolescence, but that was now shown to be wrong.

4) By giving a second dose of Sestamibi hours later, no additional information was obtained, compared with imaging the heart at 5-minutes and 60-minutes after pharmacologic stress using only a single dose of Sestamibi.

5) Using pharmacologic stress increased the measured (quantified) amount of Sestamibi in cancerous breast tissue compared with resting breast cancer images (Miraluma).

6) Finally, the quantification of the isotopes being used; quantification developed by FMTVDM, demonstrated that our nuclear cameras are flawed. They have never been calibrated to determine if they accurately measure the radiation coming from the patient.

As part of the nuclear technologists daily duties, they must first calibrate the nuclear cameras; but, the methods used to do this assure uniformity of the picture, with adjustments made to the camera images to make them appear uniform, without cold spots.

In other words the images are manipulated to appear uniform.

There has NEVER been quantitative calibration, to make certain that the nuclear cameras can accurately detect changes in isotope that occur over time as a result of isotope decay. This is most important for heart disease since detection of heart disease requires comparisons of multiple images, but failure to quantify, means we are only looking at pretty pictures.

7) As a result of developing FMTVDM, to accurately quantify and compare changes in radioactive emissions from the patient, measurements showed that 35% of the actual data is missed by other methods. Data that is critical not only for measuring; but, if you are going to look at pretty pictures and 35% of the data is missing, your pretty pictures are only pretty because they are being manipulated to be so.

8) The ability to quantify using FMTVDM, not only means accurate data, but it also means that a study done in the USA will match that same study done anywhere else in the world at any time. This also means that problems can be found earlier and the result of a treatment can be measured by doing FMTVDM before and after treatments.

Allowing us the opportunity, for the first time, to treat health problems earlier with less toxic treatments AND to determine for the first time if someone's treatment is actually working - saving time, money, radiation and lives.

The following published papers and research provide an oversight of FMTVDM and it's use for heart disease and cancer. When used for breast cancer, it is called Breast Enhanced Scintigraphy Test (B.E.S.T.) as the use of pharmacologic stress, enhances blood flow, particularly to cancers, infections, et cetera, since these tissues have increased metabolism (nuclear isotopes are dependent upon the energy gradient of mitochondria in animals and chloroplasts in plants) and blood flow (to meet their increased metabolic needs). Hence, measurement of regional metabolic and blood flow differences and the full name of the patent.