1. Positron emission tomography (PET)E(V. Sossi , vesna@physics.ubc.ca 604 822 7710) Physics and Astronomy/TRIUMF/UBC Hospital

This discipline uses nuclear physics principles to understand and quantitatively describe biological function in health and disease.

1. Development of quantitative high resolution brain imaging (includes understanding the statistical nature of the acquired data, development of low noise reconstruction algorithms, instrumentation calibration techniques and suppression of patient induces sources of noise).
2. Development of image analysis techniques to extract the maximum amount of significant information from the images (includes multi-dimensional reconstruction, modeling, statistical methods and filtering).
3. Development of mathematical modeling of biological systems to relate the numerical information obtained from the images to biological processes of interest (includes some understanding of the underlying biology and mathematical tools).
4. Development of a prototype liquid xenon PET camera ( D. Bryman) (includes simulations and design initially) – need for a graduate student.

2. Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (A. Mackay, mackay@physics.ubc.ca , 604 822 7896 Physics and Astronomy /UBC Hospital

1. To understand the nature of the nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) signal from water in biological systems including human tissue.
2. To interpret the NMR signal in terms of the underlying structure of the biological system.
3. To develop techniques for extracting useful information from the water NMR signal in human tissue in vivo.
4. To use these techniques to investigate mechanisms of human disease.

3. Single Photon Emission Tomography (SPECT) ( A. Celler, aceller@physics.ubc.ca 604 875 5252 VGH Nuclear Medicine/Physics and Astronomy webpage: www.physics.ubc.ca/~mirg

1. Investigation and development of new methods for diagnostic medical imaging. These methods need to be fast and simple to be suitable for use in everyday clinical practice as well as having to provide accurate and reliable diagnostic data with improved quantitative and functional contents. Advantage is taken of recent developments in science in order to create new methods based on physical calculations more accurate than those currently used.
2. Investigation of data acquisition and processing schemes.
3. Image reconstruction.
4. Methods for final data analysis and diagnostic support.