MEng. Jakub Baran

Dissertation advisor: Prof. Marian Cholewa

 

PhD thesis: "Obrazowanie wybranych narządów człowieka przy pomocy rezonansu i PET/MR"

 

One of the latest achievements in the field of clinical medical imaging is creating a device which combines Positron Emission Tomography – PET (allowed to study physiological changes in the human body) with Magnetic Resonance Imaging – MRI (provided information about anatomical structure). Compared to more popular PET/CT tomography (CT – computed tomography) technique allows to obtain excellent soft tissue contrast while significantly reducing the radiation dose delivered to the patient. Due to the presence of a magnetic field, which can interact with electrical parts of the system (especially with photon radiation detectors used in PET) technical construction of such a device is extremely difficult. Due to the properties of the physical phenomenon used in PET (annihilation), attenuation correction coefficients map is needed (AC maps). This issue has got very good and precise solution in case of PET/CT hybrid – electron density distribution map produced by CT provided information about attenuation coefficients (electron density is highly correlated with scatter and attenuation coefficients). It is impossible in PET/MR machine. Solutions provide by manufacturers are good but not perfect. The number of papers on this topic is growing every year making this issue very active research area.

The aim of the thesis is to familiarize PhD student with operation principles, technical aspects and the possibilities of using PET/MR machine in clinical trials with emphasis on attenuation correction issue and PET data acquisition (list-mode data). It is planned to implement and clinical evaluate novel approach for AC head map.

PhD student from November 2015 held 1-year internship at Australia's leader in biomedical imaging research – Monash Bioimaging Institute (MBI) in Melbourne (Australia). MBI is equipped with new Siemens Biograph mMR (PET/MR machine).