Targeting immune cell dynamics by longitudinal whole-body imaging and mathematical modelling

Principal investigators: Klaus Schäfers, Benedikt Wirth
Project number: CRC 1450 A05
Project term: 01/2021–12/2028

We develop strategies for tracking and quantifying (immune) cell populations or even single cells in long-term (days) whole-body PET studies in mice and humans. Our optimal transport regularized PET reconstructions of moving particles (1) can deal with much lower signal intensity than classical methods; this will be further improved by using whole body scanners, time of flight and MR information. Our digital phantoms (2) allow a systematic validation of our reconstruction methods and will be complemented with more enhanced physical phantoms.

Team

Principal investigators

• Schäfers, Klaus, Prof. Dr. rer. medic.
  European Institute for Molecular Imaging
• Wirth, Benedikt, Univ.-Prof. Dr. rer. nat.
  Applied Mathematics: Institute for Analysis and Numerics

Project members

• Uesseler, Nikolas
  Applied Mathematics: Institute for Analysis and Numerics
• Renn, Philipp
  European Institute for Molecular Imaging

Publications

The names of the principal investigators in our network have been bolded. Publications released prior to 2021, when funding for our network commenced, represent previous project-related work.