The aim of this group is to conduct research in order to extend and develop the clinical (human) applications of nuclear medicine.

This activity covers all the imaging modalities applied in NM:

• Imaging the distribution of single photon emitting radiopharmaceuticals by gamma cameras, applying planar static, dynamic and tomographic (SPECT) techniques
• Positron emission tomography (PET)
• Hybrid imaging (PET-CT and SPECT-CT).

Main fields of interest include:

• The validation of the diagnostic and prognostic value of different nuclear imaging methods in various conditions and illnesses
• Development of quantitative image processing algorithms
• The applications of NM procedures to assess the effect of different therapeutical methods
• Statistical analysis of medical research data
• Evaluation of the effectiveness and optimization of radionuclide therapy.

Imaging devices

The patient service in nuclear medicine is now run by a private subcontractor ScanoMed Ltd, operating a TOF PET-CT, a SPECT-CT and several types of dedicated gamma cameras.

The Institute of Nuclear Medicine (INM) has access to these devices for both research and educational purposes.

The two parties together have been accredited as a training center by the European Association of Nuclear Medicine.

Software packages

The development of medical image processing software has always been an important field of the INM and its predecessors.

• Digital Image Analyzer for Gamma Camera (DIAG) has been a complete package for the routine processing of clinical (planar) gamma camera studies.
• PET-MRI Tools (PMT) is a software collection for research purposes, running under Windows operation systems. It has been used at the Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, MD) and our institute for processing medical images of various modalities, including positron and single photon emission tomography (PET and SPECT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and X-ray computed tomography (CT).
• The multimodality image processing package developed at our institute, called M3I framework can and has been used for processing human as well as small animal studies.

Clinical cooperations

We have had cooperative projects and publications with most of the clinical departments of the University of Debrecen, and several international cooperations, including:

• Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions (Baltimore, MD)
• Universitätsklinikum Hamburg-Eppendorf (Hamburg, FRG)
• Catholic University of America (Washington, DC)
• Saint Raffaele Hospital (Milan, Italy)
• Köln, FRG

Publications

The diagram shows the areas of our clinical papers published in the last 5 years.

Publications in the last 5 years

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