UC Davis has received two patents on parametric PET techniques that explore the molecular transport properties of radiotracers for clinical applications after four years since filing. One patent (inventors: Guobao Wang, Souvik Sarkar, and Ramsey Badawi) is on a liver parametric PET method for measuring hepatic inflammation in fatty liver disease. In combination with CT for measuring steatosis, the liver parametric PET/CT method can be used to noninvasively diagnose and characterize metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH). The other patent (inventor: Guobao Wang) is for a technique that uses high-temporal resolution kinetic modeling to enable widely used radiotracers (e.g., 18F-FDG) for quantitative measurement of blood flow, enabling single-tracer multiparametric PET imaging for several clinical applications.

Dr. Yiran Wang (who is now a postdoctoral fellow at UCSF) received the Alavi-Mandell Award from the Journal of Nuclear Medicine (JNM) for his two JNM papers in 2023:

Wang Y, Spencer BA, Schmall J, Li E, Badawi RD, Jones T, Cherry SR, Wang GB. High-temporal resolution lung kinetic modeling using total-body dynamic PET with time delay and dispersion corrections. Journal of Nuclear Medicine, 64 (7) 1154-1161, 2023.

Wang Y, Nardo L, Spencer BA, Abdelhafez Y, Li EJ, Omidvari N, Chaudhari AJ, Badawi RD, Jones T, Cherry SR, and Wang GB. Total-Body Multiparametric PET Quantification of 18F-FDG Delivery and Metabolism in the Study of COVID-19 Recovery. Journal of Nuclear Medicine, 64 (11) 1821-1830, 2023.

The award is given to individuals who were the first author of a paper published in the JNM, were trainees at the time the published work was carried out, and made a major contribution to the completion of the work. The aim is to encourage young physicians and scientists to pursue a career in academic and research in nuclear medicine.

We successfully organized the 2024 UC Davis Molecular Liver Imaging Symposium: Collaboration in Systemic Diseases on March 11th, 2024 in the Medical Center. Focusing on the area of liver imaging, colleagues at UC Davis Health organized three symposiums in the past eight years – the first one in 2016 (Organizers: Souvik Sarkar, MD and Michael Corwin, MD), the second one in 2020 (Organizers: Souvik Sarkar, MD and Guobao Wang, PhD), and the third one in 2024 with a particular focus on molecular liver imaging (Organizer: Guobao Wang, PhD).

Congratulations to Dr. Siqi Li for promotion to Assistant Project Scientist Step 2 and Dr. Yansong Zhu for promotion to Assistant Project Scientist Step 1 in the Department of Radiology, effective March 1st, 2024. They have significantly and uniquely contributed to our PET parametric imaging research program at UC Davis Health.

The Relative Patlak Plot method, which was developed by our lab in 2018, is now made available on commercial PET scanners by a major manufacturer for clinical use. Compared to other methods, this method does not require the early-time blood input function and is therefore much easier to integrate with a clinical scan protocol for parametric imaging.

A clinical example of applying this technique for whole-body parametric imaging on a GE clinical PET scanner is shown in a recent Clinical Nuclear Medicine report by investigators from University Hospital Zurich and GE Healthcare.

We are delighted to announce that our Ph.D. candidate Yiran Wang successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis titled “Total-body PET Kinetic Modeling and Parametric Imaging with Applications to Lung Diseases and Beyond”. Yiran conducted this research under the joint supervision of Dr. Guobao Wang and Dr. Simon Cherry. The members of his dissertation committee also include Dr. Jinyi Qi.

Yiran’s dedication and hard work have culminated in this remarkable achievement. We are immensely proud of your accomplishments. Congratulations once again, Dr. Yiran Wang!

Ms. Anahita Tavakoli joins the lab as a new graduate student. She received her B.S. degree in Cognitive Science at the University of California, Davis. Anahita will be studying how the brain is changed in systemic disease using the total-body parametric PET technology. Welcome Anahita!

Dr. Kevin Chung won the Best Abstract Award in the postdoc group at the 2023 UC Davis Radiology Research Symposium for his very recent work on the parametric imaging of blood-brain barrier permeability of radiotracers using total-body dynamic PET. Congratulations Kevin!

Our lab has two abstracts accepted by the 2023 IEEE Medical Imaging Conference on the topic of total-body PET kinetic modeling and PET-enabled dual-energy CT.

Siqi Li, BA Spencer, YG Abdelhafez, L Nardo, SR Cherry, RD Badawi, T Jones, GB Wang. Quantification of volume-of-distribution of free-state radiotracer using total-body PET kinetic modeling with time delay correction. IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference (NSS & MIC), Vancouver, November 2023. accepted for oral presentation.

Yansong Zhu, S Li, R Bayerlein, RD Badawi, GB Wang. Maximum-likelihood estimation of scatter scaling for PET-enabled dual-energy CT. IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference (NSS & MIC), Vancouver, November 2023. accepted for oral presentation.

Guobao has been promoted to the rank of Full Professor with tenure, effective on July 1st, 2023.