Dan J. Kadrmas, Ph.D.

RESEARCH

Rapid Multi-Tracer PET Cancer Imaging

The ability to image multiple aspects of tumor physiology with positron emission tomography (PET) would greatly improve tumor characterization in vivo, offering an improved ability to select the most effective therapies and monitor their effectiveness in individual patients. Dr. Kadrmas's group is developing the technology to rapidly image multiple PET tracers, where dynamic imaging techniques are used to recover quantitative images of each tracer based on differences in tracer kinetics.

Quantitative Image Reconstruction and Processing

Positron emission tomography has the ability to image and quantify physiologic processes in vivo. Dr. Kadrmas is developing improved reconstruction algorithms and partial-volume compensation methods designed to improve both PET lesion detectability performance and quantitative accuracy. These images show a dual-modality PET/CT example, demonstrating how high-resolution CT images (left) can be used to precisely demarcate tumor boundaries and compensate for partial-volume errors in the PET image.

Task-Based Evaluation of New Technologies

The PET research group is also a leader in evaluating task-specific performance of PET technologies. This figure shows a comparison of a whole-body lesion detection phantom imaged on seven PET imaging platforms. A human observer study with localization receiver operating characteristics (LROC) analysis was performed to evaluate the relative lesion detectability performance of the scanners. Details can be found in JNM 34(11):1545-1554, 2002.