COLLOQUIUM
In Vivo Imaging of Stem
Cells
Dr. Ali Lashgari
California Institute of Technology
Department of
Mathematics
Monday,
April 30th, 2012
4:00 p.m.
204 Morgan Hall
Refreshments will be
served at 3:45 p.m.
Abstract
Stem cell-based therapies are currently used for cancer treatment
and are an active area of biological and medical research. Stem
cells are studied intensively in vitro; however, one challenge is to
track the fate of stem cells in vivo after treatment. Hence, one
approach is to develop noninvasive imaging techniques to assess
the survival, distribution, behavior and function of stem cells. Our
interest is to study in more depth the low radioactive signal from
radio-labeled stem cells by using coded apertures to increase the
signal-to-noise ratio. One advantage of coded apertures is that it
produces images from radiating objects and has been applied in
astronomy, but more recently in nuclear medical imaging.
Therefore, our primary focus will be to explore the mathematical
and physical properties of coded apertures to improve stem cell
imaging.