| Positron Emission Tomography (PET) is a powerful molecular imaging technique that can provide quantitative information about molecular processes in the living body. The system detects pairs of gamma rays emitted from radioactive tracers that are introduced into the living body to minic the behavior of certain biologically active molecules. While having wide clinical and preclinical applications, in particular in oncology and neuroimaging, PET imaging modality faces many challenges. These challenges include low signal to noise ratio (SNR), relatively low spatial and temporal resolution, efficient processing of very large data sets, and difficulty in mapping reconstructed PET images to physiologically meaningful parameters and statistics. The goals of my Ph.D. research are first to use various theoretical and practical approaches to study and improve the SNR and resolution of reconstructed PET images, and also to use statistical models to analyze the reconstructed PET images. |
