Quantitative Nuclear Imaging Physics

News

The work of Alejandra Valladares on PET/MRI quality control published in Frontiers of Physics - Medical Physics and Imaging was featured on AuntMinnie.com

Research

The current research activities of our lab are geared towards:

• Quantitative, combined imaging (PET/CT, PET/MR, SPECT/CT)
• Supporting clinical adoption of fully integrated PET/MRI
• Image-based phenotyping and texture analysis

Our ongoing research projects include:

• The effect of MR-based Attenuation Correction (AC) on PET(/MR) quantification
• Data-driven motion correction in PET
• Clinical adoption of Partial Volume Correction (PVC) in cardiac PET
• Novel image reconstruction methods
• Image-derived input function and kinetic analysis
• Non-invasive modeling of kidney function
• Image-based phentotyping

Our research is supported through the following grants:

• “Multi-centre PET/CT: Quality control, FDG-guidelines and quantification”,  Funding from the Austrian Society of Nuclear Medicine (OGN), 2013-4

• “Quantification of bone lesions in combined PET/MR and Dual-time point imaging of lesions with PET/MR", Funding from Siemens Healthcare (SMS), 2014-6  

• “Personalized diagnosis of non-lesional epilepsy using simultaneous PET/MR”, Funding from Austrian Science Fund (FWF), KLI 482-B31, 2015-8

• "18F-FDG and 18F-NaF-PET Imaging of Vulnerable Plaque", Funding from Siemens, 2016-17

• “Low-count-high-quality reconstructions for PET and SPECT”, Funding from Austrian Science Fund (FWF),  2017-20

• “Innovative Training Network towards raising and supporting the next generation of creative and entrepreneurial cross-specialty imaging expert”, EU Project 764458 “HYBRID” (H2020-MSCA-ITN-2017)

• "Improving Clinical PET imaging for non-optimal positron emitters", Supported by Siemens Healthineers, 2018-20

Collaborations

National

• Nuclear Medicine Department, Medical University of Vienna
• Department of Biomedical Imaging and Image-guided Therapy , Medical University of Vienna
• Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT)
• Technical University of Vienna (TU Wien)
• Joint MSc projects in collaboration with VRVis:
  • Multi-modality co-registration of combined PET/MR imaging data
  • Machine learning for deriving attenuation maps

International

• Department of Pediatrics, Wayne State University, Detroit, USA
• European Institute for Molecular Imaging, University of Münster, Germany
• Grupo de Física Nuclear, Dpto. Física Atómica, Molecular y Nuclear, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, CEI Moncloa, Madrid, Spain
• Institute of Computational Mathematics and Mathematical Geophysics, Novosibirsk State University, Novosibirsk, Russia
• Institute of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, Novosibirsk State Technical University, Novosibirsk, Russia
• KU/UZ Leuven, Department of Imaging and Pathology, Division of Nuclear Medicine. Leuven, Belgium

Industry

Microsoft

Mirada

NVIDIA Corporation

Siemens

Documents

Synapse repository

DMP template

Highlighted publications

2019

• Valladares A, Ahangari S, Beyer T, Boellaard R, Chalampalakis Z, Comtat C, DalToso L, Hansen A E., Koole M, Mackewn J, Marsden P, Nuyts J, Padormo F, Peeters R, Poth S, Solari E, Rausch I. Clinically Valuable Quality Control for PET/MRI Systems: Consensus Recommendation From the HYBRID Consortium, Frontiers in Physics, 2019, 7, 136
• Papp L, Spielvogel C, Rausch I, Hacker M and Beyer T; Personalizing Medicine Through Hybrid Imaging and Medical Big Data Analysis Front. Phys., 07 June 2018
• I Rausch, A Ruiz, I Valverde-Pascual, J Cal-Gonzalez, T Beyer and I Carrio. Performance evaluation of the Vereos PET/CT system according to NEMA NU2-2012 standard. J Nucl Med 60(4): 561-567, 2019
• LKS Sundar, O Muzik, L Rischka, A Hahn, R Lanzenberger, M Hienert, EM Klebermass, M Bauer, I Rausch, E Pataraia, T Traub-Weidinger and T Beyer. The promise of fully-integrated PET/MR imaging: Non-invasive clinical quantification of cerebral glucose metabolism. J Nucl Med (accepted), 2019

2018

• Papp L, Pötsch N, Grahovac M, Schmidbauer V, Woehrer A, Preusser M, Mitterhauser M, Kiesel B, Wadsak W, Beyer T, Hacker M and Traub-Weidinger T; Glioma Survival Prediction with Combined analysis of In Vivo ¹¹C  C-MET PET Features, Ex Vivo Features, and Patient Features by Supervised Machine Learning. J Nucl Med. June 1, 2018 vol. 59 no. 6 892-899
• Lalith KS Sundar, Muzik O, Rischka L, Hahn A, Rausch I, Lanzenberger R, Hienert M, Klebermass E-M, Füchsel F-G, Hacker M, Pilz M, Pataraia E, Traub-Weidinger T, and Beyer T; Towards quantitative [18F]FDG-PET/MRI of the brain: Automated MR-driven calculation of an image-derived input function for the non-invasive determination of cerebral glucose metabolic rates. Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow & Metabolism. March 2018
• Cal-Gonzalez J, Rausch I, Shiyam Sundar L K, Lassen M L, Muzik O, Moser E, Papp L, Beyer T; Hybrid Imaging: Instrumentation and Data Processing. Front. Phys. 2018,6

2017

• Cal-Gonzalez J, Li X, Heber D, Rausch I, Moore SC, Schäfers K, Hacker M and Beyer T; Partial volume correction for improved PET quantification in 18F-NaF imaging of atherosclerotic plaques. J Nucl Cardiol. 2017 (ahead of print)
• Lassen ML, Muzik O, Beyer T, Hacker M, Ladefoged CN, Cal-González J, Wadsak W, Rausch I, Langer O, Bauer M. Reproducibility of Quantitative Brain Imaging Using a PET-Only and a Combined PET/MR System. Front Neurosci. 2017;11:396

2016

• Rausch I, Füchsel FF, Kuderer C, Hentschel M and Beyer T. Radiation exposure levels of routine SPECT/CT imaging protocols. Eur J Rad 2016;85:1627-1636
• Rausch I, Rust P, DiFranco MD, Lassen M, Stadlbauer A, Mayerhoefer ME, Hartenbach M, Hacker M and Beyer T. Reproducibility of MRI Dixon-based attenuation correction in combined PET/MR with applications for lean body mass estimation. J Nuc Med 2016;57:1096-1101

2015

• Boellaard R, Rausch I, Beyer T, Delso G, Yaqub M, Quick HH and Sattler B; Quality control for quantitative multi-center whole-body PET/MR studies: A NEMA Image Quality phantom study with three current PET/MR systems. Med. Phys 2015;42:5961-5969
• Rausch I, Cal-González J, Dapra D, Gallowitsch HJ, Lind P, Beyer T and Minear G Performance evaluation of the Biograph mCT Flow PET/CT system according to the NEMA NU2-2012 standard. EJNMMI phys. 2015;2:26

2014

• Rausch I, Bergmann H, Geist B, Schaffarich M, Hirtl A, Hacker M, Beyer T; Variation of system performance, quality control standards and adherence to international FDG-PET/CT imaging guidelines. A national survey of PET/CT operations in Austria. Nuklearmedizin 2014;53:242-248