Spencer L. Bowen
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, TX·Biomedical Engineering
Imaging the heart often means two separate scans. PET (positron emission tomography) shows metabolic activity, and MRI shows tissue structure.
- Fields
Biomedical Engineering
Physics
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
positron emission tomography
attenuation correction
cardiac imaging
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2030
What they work on
- Build a device that rapidly and safely moves an external PET source into and out of a PET/MR scanner, so that signal attenuation can be measured directly during patient heart imaging.
- Develop image reconstruction algorithms with real-time hardware optimization and deep learning enhancement, so that PET quantification stays accurate despite metal implants, breathing motion and low lung signal.
- Evaluate the new attenuation correction in patients with cardiac sarcoidosis, many of whom have implanted defibrillators, by comparing prospective FDG-PET/MR scans with reference PET/CT scans, along with phantom and simulation studies.
More about the research
Scanners that combine the two, called PET/MR, could do both in a single exam. This would mean less patient burden, lower cost and less radiation than separate PET/CT and MRI scans. However, PET images from PET/MR are often less accurate than those from PET/CT.
Why it matters
More accurate PET measurements from combined PET/MR could let patients with cardiac sarcoidosis, and with heart disease more broadly, get diagnosis, prognosis and treatment monitoring from one exam instead of two. This would mean less radiation and lower cost. It could also make PET-based research findings in heart disease more reliable.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Kuang Gong
University of Florida, FL·Biomedical Engineering
Develop a data-driven respiratory motion-correction framework with phase-matched attenuation correction to reduce breathing blur in Gallium-68 PET scans of tumors.
Michael King
University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, MA·Biomedical Engineering
Create Monte Carlo simulations of Ac-225 PSMA SPECT/CT imaging in targeted alpha therapy to jointly optimize collimator design and physics-based image reconstruction for tumor detection and quantification.
James Pipe
University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI·Biomedical Engineering
Develop a portfolio of spiral-based MRI sequences optimized for signal-to-noise ratio and designed to pair with modern AI-based image reconstruction, to speed up common clinical scans and keep image quality and contrast consistent.
The school
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center: 40 labs on PI Pages, $869M a year on research, 86 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
A start for your email. Fill in the brackets.