Dr Vesan Sossi of Department of Physics and Astronomy, UBC

Brain PET originally started as a quantitative technique to investigate brain metabolism and blood flow. While compared to today’s standards the studies performed in the early days would be considered technically very simple, they revolutionized our understanding of brain function as related to health, disease and personality, with related health and social impact. Rapid advancements in detector technology, PET tracer development and data processing algorithms, facilitated by  increasing computing power, led to increasingly more accurate and selective imaging of specific neurochemical targets and processes. More advanced image analysis methods  are now shedding new light on neurochemical connectivity and its interplay with functional and structural networks revealing the complexity of brain function and hopefully identifying new therapeutic targets for several devastating brain disorders.

This talk will discuss this fascinating journey emphasizing the interplay  between scientific discoveries and developments in instrumentation and data analysis and how their synergies are opening news fields of investigation and ultimately facilitate clinical applications.

Biography:

Vesna Sossi is a Professor in the University of British Columbia (UBC) Physics and Astronomy Department and at the UBC Djavad Mowafaghian Center for Brain Health. She directs the UBC Positron Emission Tomography/ Magnetic Resonance Imaging  (PET/MRI) imaging centre, which is known for its use of imaging as applied to the investigation of brain function in health and neurodegenerative disease. Her main areas of interest comprise development of multi-modality imaging methods to enhance the investigation of neurochemical mechanisms and related brain connectivity with particular emphasis on Parkinson’s disease (PD). She uses PET imaging to explore how different neurotransmitter systems contribute to different trajectories of disease progression. Her other areas of interest are quantitative PET and PET/MRI data processing, including image reconstruction, instrumentation and multi-modal, multi-parameter data analysis. She published more than 225 peer review papers, is funded by several granting agencies, and sits on several national and international review panels. She is an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer and currently  IEEE NPSS Vice-president.

Email:

Address:Department of Physics and Astronomy, UBC, , Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada