Grants and Contributions:

Grant or Award spanning more than one fiscal year. (2017-2018 to 2022-2023)

Positron emission
tomography (PET) is an imaging modality that allows non-invasive assessment of tissue
function at the molecular level in both clinical and preclinical settings
through imaging the biodistribution of radioactively labelled tracers. The high
specificity of many PET imaging tracers results in images with little anatomical
information, making it difficult to assign the tracer uptake to specific
tissues and complicating the interpretation and analysis of the images. The
solution to this problem has been to integrate PET with an anatomical imaging
modality, initially X-ray computed tomography (CT) and more recently, magnetic
resonance (MR) imaging. Integration of PET with MR for preclinical hybrid
PET/MR imaging of small animals can be efficiently accomplished through using a
PET insert that fits within the bore of an existing high field MR system and
can operate simultaneously with the MR. During the previous funding cycle, our
group successfully developed and deployed such an insert for small animal
PET/MR imaging using new MR compatible silicon photodetectors and a multi-layer
scintillator array to preserve spatial resolution in the compact ring diameter
PET system. PET insert systems for preclinical imaging are now becoming
commercially available, including one based on our design commercialized through
a Canadian company.

In this application I will build on our
expertise in PET insert systems for small animal PET/MR to achieve my long
term objective of creating hardware and software technologies that
enable the use of hybrid PET/MR imaging with PET inserts as a routine imaging
modality in preclinical small animal research studies and in human neuroimaging
application. To achieve this goal, the short term objectives of my research
program detailed in this proposal cover three themes: i) algorithms and hardware
to advance preclinical PET/MR imaging; ii) detector development for next
generation PET insert systems; and iii) creating technologies to facilitate and
automate small animal PET/MR imaging.

These research objectives create multi-disciplinary
training opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students from Electrical
Engineering, Biomedical Engineering and Medical Physics. Close collaboration
with both end users of imaging systems at the preclinical animal imaging and
clinical imaging levels, together with industrial partners that manufacture
imaging systems, facilitates rapid testing and deployment of new technologies, integration
of user feedback for revisions and a path for technology translation of new devices.