Physics of PET and SPECT Imaging

This text provides coverage of PET and SPECT instrumentation and multimodality imaging. It takes an integrative approach, bridging the researcher and clinician’s perspectives. It begins with an introduction to basic physics of PET and SPECT, followed by a section on detector technology. It addresses various aspects of producing quantitative images, such as techniques for image reconstruction, corrections to the data to produce quantitative images, and dynamic imaging. It also discusses instrumentation for multimodality imaging and technologies used in pre-clinical imaging using PET and SPECT.

Magnus Dahlbom has been working in the field of Nuclear Medicine for close to 30 years. He earned his B.Sc. in physics from the University of Stockholm in 1982. He received his Ph.D. from UCLA in 1987. His Ph.D. research was on high-resolution PET detectors and image processing. In 1989 he was part of the team that started the first clinical PET operation in the U.S. at UCLA. Around the same time developed together with Drs. Edward J. Hoffman and Michael E. Phelps the Whole Body PET imaging technique, which currently makes up more than 90% of all PET studies performed. His research interests are in PET and SPECT instrumentation and image processing. Since 1989 he has been the chief physicist at the Nuclear Medicine services at UCLA where he is responsible for all imaging instrumentation, including SPECT, SPECT/CT and PET/CT systems. At UCLA he is the faculty graduate advisor in the Biomedical Physics graduate program. He is teaching graduate level courses on the basics of Nuclear Medicine imaging and instrumentation. He has authored and co-authored more than 120 research papers and 11 book chapters on nuclear imaging instrumentation and processing. He was also co-editor of a PET/CT atlas. For the last 6 years he has been serving as an editorial consultant to the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Nuclear Medicine.