Engineering Commons^™

Production Of Medical Radioisotopes Using Titanium Accelerator Targets, Christopher Shaun Loveless

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Theranostic radiopharmaceuticals enable diagnostic imaging and radionuclide therapy in patients using a single molecular agent labeled with a diagnostic-therapeutic pair (e.g., 68Ga/177Lu) or a theranostic radionuclide (e.g., 131I). This theranostic approach can help inform patient-specific treatment plans and improve clinical outcomes. Radionuclide pairs used in theranostic agents fall into two categories: pseudo matched-pairs (e.g., 68Ga/177Lu) and matched-pairs (e.g., 124I/131I). Pseudo matched-pair radionuclides have similar chemistries and pharmacokinetics when bound to the same bioconjugate molecule. In contrast, identical chemistries and pharmacokinetics can be obtained by using the matched-pair radionuclides.

The isotopes of Sc include two diagnostic radioisotopes, 43Sc & 44Sc, and …

Separating Signal From Noise In High-Density Diffuse Optical Tomography, Arefeh Sherafati

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

High-density diffuse optical tomography (HD-DOT) is a relatively new neuroimaging technique that detects the changes in hemoglobin concentrations following neuronal activity through the measurement of near-infrared light intensities. Thus, it has the potential to be a surrogate for functional MRI (fMRI) as a more naturalistic, portable, and cost-effective neuroimaging system. As in other neuroimaging modalities, head motion is the most common source of noise in HD-DOT data that results in spurious effects in the functional brain images. Unlike other neuroimaging modalities, data quality assessment methods are still underdeveloped for HD-DOT. Therefore, developing robust motion detection and motion removal methods in …

Phantoms To Placentas: Mr Methods For Oxygen Quantification, Kelsey Meinerz

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Molecular oxygen (O2) is vital for efficient energy production and improper oxygenation is a hallmark of disease or metabolic dysfunction. In many pathologies, knowledge of tissue oxygen levels (pO2) could aid in diagnosis and treatment planning. The gold standard for pO2 measures in tissue are implantable probes, which are invasive, require surgery for placement, and are inaccessible to certain regions of the body. Methods for determining pO2 both non-invasively and quantitatively are lacking. The slight paramagnetic nature of O2 provides opportunities to non-invasively characterize pO2 in tissue via magnetic resonance (MR) techniques. As such, O2 can be treated as a …