Research overview

Dr Dimitra Darambara, Multimodality Molecular Imaging Group

The research of the group has several projects on emerging medical imaging technologies and techniques ranging from the development of new detector technologies to the building of complete imaging systems for task- specific applications to visualise and characterise molecular mechanisms and structures of malignant disease. We have extensive experience in managing and implementing several hardware projects which led to prototype and/or full-scale imaging systems in close collaboration with detector and healthcare industry.

Our research interests focus on the development of innovative semiconductor and photon-counting pixellated detectors to enhance molecular sensitivity, the realisation of single and multimodal molecular and spectral imaging systems for the next generation of healthcare hardware, the development of sophisticated 3D computational anthropomorphic phantoms for dosimetric and imaging proof-of-concept studies as well as the design and performance modelling of imaging systems by combining state-of-the-art Monte Carlo and Finite Element Analysis codes.

In general, we implement a dynamic “hardware-development” approach, unique to our group, which combines a realistic and versatile multi-environment software platform with extensive experimental measurements, in an iterative exchange fashion, to refine detector design specifications, to design and optimise novel imaging systems and techniques, to carry out proof-of-concept studies before building prototype systems, to assess overall system-level imaging and dose performance and to evaluate pre-clinical and clinical systems.