Positron Imaging at Birmingham

When?

Wednesday 7 November 2012, 14:00 to 15:00

Where?

CVSSP Seminar Room (40bAB05)

Open to:

Public, Staff, Students

Speaker:

Dr Thomas Leadbeater, University of Birmingham

Abstract:

At the University of Birmingham Positron Imaging Centre variants of the medical imaging technique of Positron Emission Tomography (PET) are used to study granular dynamics, multiphase flows, and the behaviour of engineering and process equipment. Positron emitting radioisotopes (produced on the Birmingham cyclotron) emit pairs of back-to-back gamma photons as part of their decay process. Detection of these photon pairs allows us to locate a radioactively labelled particle in three dimensions on a rapid timescale. Over the course of an experiment it is expected that the labelled particle will exhibit motion representative of the bulk, and we use the Lagrangian particle trajectory to infer the overall Eulerian behaviour of the system in question. This seminar will outline the methods used: from detection of the photon pairs, reconstruction of the photon trajectories, and subsequent data analysis which is used to investigate dynamic behaviour or produce steady state images of the system under study. Outline applications and open questions will be discussed.