US Patent Issued to University of South Florida, H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute on Oct. 7 for "Molecular imaging of the cochlea" (Florida Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Oct. 8 -- United States Patent no. 12,433,549, issued on Oct. 7, was assigned to University of South Florida (Tampa, Fla.) and H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute Inc. (Tampa, Fla.).

"Molecular imaging of the cochlea" was invented by Parveen Bazard (Tampa, Fla.), Mikalai Budzevich (Tampa, Fla.), Xiaoxia Zhu (Tampa, Fla.), Bo Ding (Tampa, Fla.) and Robert Dana Frisina (Tampa, Fla.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A novel method of measuring endocochlear potential and cochlear function in a patient is presented. The method uses nuclear imaging, such as PET or SPECT, with a radiotracer such as 201Tl to visualize any potassium ion loss in the cochlea of the patient ...