My research interests

One of my principle interests is doing attenuation correction in SPECT imaging using non-uniform attenuation maps obtained from a transmission scan. I did some work on the subject for my Master's thesis. With my latest job responsibilities though, I don't get to spend a great deal of time working on it. I hope to get back to it one of these days though.

My latest involvement is in the IMACS/PACS project currently underway in the ER Radiology department at Henry Ford Hospital. It's a big project, with lots of executive eyes watching it. It's been slow going so far trying to get everything integrated. Integration is my main focus now. I'm working on getting other digital modalities integrated into the same network and getting them talking to each other. DICOM makes the task a little easier, but each vendor seems to have their own dialect of DICOM. Sometimes it just works, other times it can be a little more painful.

I'm also keenly interested in computer applications in Radiology, and my next project is probably going to be something related to image reconstruction in a distributed computing environment. I plan to take the 20 or so computers around the department, lash them all together with PVM (Parallel Virtual Machine) and use them to reconstruct SPECT images using an ML-EM algorithm or maybe do other things with them.

The use of neural nets in imaging is also starting to get my interest, although at the moment I haven't got any time to explore it. One of these days perhaps.

I've dabbled a bit in a relatively new triple energy window scatter correction method implemented by Toshiba's new SPECT cameras, investigating some of the noise and resolution properties of this technique. It looks promising (I guess it must be, if Toshiba is using it commercially).

One of the first medical physics projects I worked on was in my 4th year undergrad lab a few years ago. The project was to reduce the radiation exposure for pediatric patients undergoing cardiac catheterization procedures. We managed to get a very significant reduction in skin entrance exposure with little loss in image quality using a small amount of copper filtration (only 0.2 mm extra copper filtration).

Wavelet compression of medical images is interesting. If you're interested in finding out more about wavelets, the Wavelet Resources page is a great place to start.

I can also do QC and acceptance testing on X-ray and nuclear medicine equipment too.

Check out the bare bones no-frills teleradiology project I helped set up.

If you happen to own a Picker Odyssey (VP/Titan) along with your nuclear medicine equipment, check out this compression utility. This handy little utility will compress patient files using the UNIX compress(1) command (a lossless algorithm). It even comes with a new front end to make it even easier to use than before. Typical compression ratios of up to 5:1 have been achieved. A great way to save $$$ on optical disks. Full documentation is enclosed.

And if none of what you've just read makes any sense to you, well don't worry about it :). Feel free to mail me though if you want to discuss anything or have questions. My address is eugenem@ix.netcom.com.