Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging methods enable a bimodal way for the imaging of diseases. On the one hand we aim to generate accurate and high quality images of metabolic processes and on the other hand it is absolutely pivotal to quantify this information. Quantification is considered to be a hallmark for non-invasive molecular imaging with radiotracers, because it was shown to be an important tool for diagnosis, response monitoring and even for determination of prognosis. However, accurate quantification of the amount of radioactivity is subject to several confounding factors like photon attenuation and scatter, partial volume effects and additionally motion artefacts that necessitates different corrections algorithms. Therefore a continuous improvement and development of reconstruction and correction methods is necessary as well as the implementation of dosimetry tools for treatment planning as well as 4-dimensional imaging (Dynamic PET). Our research is focused on the following issues.

- Absolute quantification in SPECT and PET
- Imaging and quantification of pure beta emitters
- Dosimetry and treatment planning in nuclear medicine treatmens
- Dynamic PET and modelling of tracer kinetics
- Improvement of correction methods (attenuation, scatter, resolution, partial-volume-effect) in nuclear medicine imaging

Contact: Dipl.-Phys. J. Kupferschläger, Sebastian Poth