Where: Imagerie et Vision Artificielle (ImViA) laboratory, Dijon, France
Specific unit: Department of Nuclear Medicine, Centre Georges-François Leclerc, Dijon France
Duration of the internship: 6 months
Stipend: about 590 € per month
Supervising team: Romain Popoff, PhD; Benoit Presles, PhD; Jean-Marc Vrigneaud, PhD

Project description
For treatment of irresectable liver malignancies, selective internal radiation therapy (SIRT) involves the administration of yttrium-90 (90Y) β-radiation emitter microspheres. After administration, validation of the 90Y microsphere distribution is crucial for performing accurate measures of absorbed doses and properly document the patient dose. Validation can be carried out using various imaging modalities, but positron emission tomography (PET) has become a method of choice these last years. Imaging is based on a minor decay branch of 90Y (32 per 1,000,000 decays) which can limit image quality and require longer PET acquisition times when compared with higher branching fraction PET isotopes such as 18F. The aim of this internship is to study the acquisition and reconstruction parameters that lead to quantitative accuracy of 90Y-PET images. Studies are conducted on a recent SiPM-based PET scanner installed on our site. The student will have to carry out experiments on physical phantoms and study the different reconstruction parameters available on the system through image analysis of various image-quality metrics. In particular, the system comes with a new Bayesian Penalised Likelihood (BPL) reconstruction algorithm that potentially has the ability to reduce the noise within low-count PET acquisitions. Moreover, the study will be consolidated by a retrospective analysis on patient data.

Person specification
Candidates must be engineering or master students in a relevant field such as physics, biomedical engineering, computer science, or applied mathematics.

Application
Applications (including a CV and a covering letter outlining your motivation for the position) should be sent to Romain Popoff (rpopoff at cgfl.fr), Benoit Presles (benoit.presles at u-bourgogne.fr) and Jean-Marc Vrigneaud (jmvrigneaud at cgfl.fr).

Closing date: 31st December 2021