Design and Development of High Spatial Resolution Positron Emission Tomography (PET) Systems

PET imaging employs positron-emitting radionuclides to visualize and quantify the biology and chemistry of disease in living subjects.  There has been great interest to enhance the spatial resolution of PET imaging to be able to detect subtle signatures of disease, which can enable earlier disease detection and more sensitive monitoring of therapeutic strategies. PET imaging relies on detection and positioning of 511 keV annihilation photon pairs emitted from the imaging subject. In this talk we will describe technologies and techniques that are employed to achieve sub-millimeter spatial resolution.

Dr. Craig Levin is a Professor in the Department of Radiology with courtesy appointments in the Departments of Physics, Electrical Engineering, and Bioengineering at Stanford University. He is a founding Member of the Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford (MIPS), and faculty member of the Stanford’s Bio-X Program, Cancer Institute, Cardiovascular Institute, and Neurosciences Institute. He is director and PI of the NIH-NCI funded Stanford Molecular Imaging Scholars (SMIS) post-doctoral training program, and Co-Director of the Stanford Center for Innovation in In Vivo Imaging (SCI^3). Dr. Levin’s also directs a 25-member research laboratory whose research interests are to explore new concepts in imaging instrumentation and computational algorithms for advancing our ability to visualize and quantify molecular and cellular pathways of disease in living subjects. To support this work he has received numerous grants from NIH, DOE, DOD, NSF, industrial sponsorship from companies such as GE, Siemens, and Philips, as well as research awards from numerous non-profit foundations.  Dr. Levin has over 170 peer-reviewed publications and 26 awarded patents.