PhD candidate at the School for Oncology and Developmental Biology, Department of Imaging

Maastricht University Medical Center+ (The Netherlands)
The radiology department of the Maastricht University Medical Center+ (MUMC+) comprises all applications of medical imaging for patient care (diagnostics and treatment) and clinical scientific research. Imaging, and in particular nuclear medicine, is a multidisciplinary field in which (nuclear) radiologists, medical physicists, radiochemists, pharmacists, radiation protection experts, technicians and scientists are involved.

As medical imaging is considered to play a pivotal role in the diagnosis and treatment of patients, state-of-the-art medical imaging equipment (PET/CT, PET/MRI, SPECT/CT, US, CR, CT, (high-field) MRI, etc.) is available at the radiology department of the MUMC+.

KU Leuven (Belgium)
Situated in Belgium, in the heart of Western Europe, KU Leuven has been a center of learning for nearly six centuries. Today, it is Belgium's largest university and, founded in 1425, one of the oldest and most renowned universities in Europe.

The Medical Imaging Research Center (MIRC) is an interdisciplinary research center in the University Hospital Gasthuisberg. The focus lies on fundamental and translational research in medical imaging and image processing. The center is a joined initiative of the KU Leuven (Biomedical Sciences) and the University Hospitals Leuven. Over 100 engineers, physicians and physicists are working closely together with bio-scientists and clinicians. The MIRC-members are the department of Electrical Engineering (PSI), the department of Imaging and Pathology (Radiology and Nuclear Medicine), the department of Cardiovascular Sciences, the department of Neurosciences and the department of Radiotherapy.

Within MIRC, the Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (NMMI) research group performs groundbreaking translational research on innovative molecular imaging technologies. We use Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and highly specific PET radiotracers as a key technology to gain insight into disease and drug mechanisms at a molecular level. Within our research group, a multidisciplinary team of physicians, physicists/engineers and radio-pharmacists continuously work on translating new PET radiotracers from a development and preclinical stage into a clinical setting to provide new diagnostic and biomarker tools and support innovative drug development.

For this translation ‘from bench to bedside’, the associated PET data acquisition and analysis is crucial for the accurate quantification of the PET signal. This involves the optimal design of the experiments, dynamic imaging with motion management and the appropriate compartmental modeling to quantify tracer kinetics. State of the art multimodal imaging infrastructure is available, including simultaneous PET-MRI and microPET/CT/MRI.