Cordially invite you to attend the following PET seminar on Thursday the 20th April 2017, 12-1pm, Worsley Building 9.87 at the School of Medicine, University of Leeds. Please, let me know if you plan to attend.

Forward to the Past: The Case for Quantitative PET Imaging

Professor Adriaan A. Lammertsma, Department of Radiology & Nuclear Medicine, VU University Medical Center, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Positron emission tomography (PET) was developed in the 1970’s as an in vivo method to measure regional pathophysiological processes. In the 1990’s the focus moved to the detection of local increases in uptake, first in the brain (activation studies) and later in oncology (finding metastases), where [18F]FDG emerged as a highly sensitive staging technique. This focus on sensitivity has overshadowed the other main characteristic of PET, its quantitative nature. In recent years there has been a new shift. PET is now seen as a promising tool for precision medicine, i.e. a method to monitor or even predict response to therapy. For precision medicine quantification is essential, but nowadays many studies use simplified semi-quantitative methods without proper validation of those methods. In this presentation several examples are provided to illustrate that simplified methods may lead to less accurate or even misleading results. Simplification is important for routine clinical practice, but it requires careful studies to find the optimal balance between accuracy and simplicity. It is argued that the use of simplified approaches without proper validation is indeed unethical.

Short Bio: Prof. Adriaan A. Lammertsma, PhD, is head of research of the Department of Radiology & Nuclear Medicine of the VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam. He has been active in PET research since 1979, when he joined the MRC Cyclotron Unit, Hammersmith Hospital in London. Apart from a sabbatical year at UCLA, Los Angeles, he stayed in London until 1996, when he moved to Amsterdam. Over the years his research focus has been the development and application of tracer kinetic models for quantitative PET studies. He has worked on applications in neurology, cardiology and oncology. In addition, he was one of the first to recognise the value of PET in both drug development and personalised treatment. He is the 2012 recipient of the Kuhl-Lassen Award from the Society of Nuclear Medicine for ‘outstanding contributions to the advancement of molecular imaging’ and the 2015 recipient of the ESMI Award from the European Society of Molecular Imaging for ‘his outstanding and excellent contributions to the field of Imaging Science, his commitment and dedication’.

Best wishes,

Harry 

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Charalampos Tsoumpas, PhD DIC FHEA, Senior Member IEEE

Lecturer in Medical Imaging

LICAMM Lead for Enterprise & Innovation

University of Leeds