With cutting-edge research in the fields of ENERGY, HEALTH and MATTER, around 1,500 employees from more than 70 nations at Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) are committed to mastering the great challenges facing society today.

At the Institute of Radiopharmaceutical Cancer Research scientists (f/m/d) from the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, pharmacy, immunology, medicine and IT develop innovative radiopharmaceuticals and novel tools for the functional characterization, improved imaging and personalized treatment of tumors.

The Department of Positron Emission Tomography is looking for a PhD Student (f/m/d) to work on the Development and Evaluation of Image Reconstruction Methods for Simultaneous Clinical Dual-Tracer PET Imaging.

Positron emission tomography (PET) is a cornerstone of today’s cancer diagnosis, treatment planning, and response assessment. By administering specific radiotracers, PET enables the visualization and quantification of distinct physiological processes in the human body. However, clinical PET imaging has so far been limited to imaging the distribution of a single radiotracer per scan. In collaboration with the Forschungszentrum Jülich, the PET department at the HZDR has launched a joint research project to evaluate the potential of dualtracer PET imaging. This innovative approach enable the separation of two simultaneously acquired radiotracers and to provide two distinct images from a single PET acquisition. Within this project, we will jointly develop, adapt and implement advanced image reconstruction algorithms in our in-house reconstruction software to evaluate the feasibility of dual-tracer imaging on clinical PET scanners. The ultimate goal of the project is to translate the developed methods towards clinical application. With the planned installation of a new total-body PET scanner in Dresden, the developed methods will also be evaluated and validated on this clinical system, enabling a direct pathway from methodological development to clinical impact.