Description:

Guest: Olivia Kelada

Postgraduate Fellow, Therapeutic Radiology,
Yale University, New Haven, CT

Olivia Kelada is a PhD student in Medical Physics from the German Cancer Research Center at the University of Heidelberg in Germany. Her PhD project is a collaborative effort between the University of Heidelberg and Yale University. She also has a background in Radiation Biology, having received an MSc in Radiation Biology from the University of Oxford. Olivia was recently awarded a ‘Best in Physics’ abstract award for her clinical imaging work.

Title: Molecular Imaging of Tumor Hypoxia with Positron Emission Tomography

The problem of tumor hypoxia has been recognized and studied by the oncology community for over 60 years. From radiation and chemotherapy resistance to the increased risk of metastasis, low oxygen concentrations in tumors have caused patients with many types of tumors to respond poorly to conventional cancer therapies. Positron emission tomography (PET) imaging has played a key role in imaging tumor hypoxia due to the development of hypoxia-specific radiolabelled agents. This talk aims to a) discuss the accuracy and reproducibility of PET imaging to quantify tumor hypoxia and b) present results from the in-vivo experiments and a patient pilot-study carried out at Yale University using 18F-fluoromisonidazole (18F-FMISO) PET imaging to non-invasively quantify the tumor hypoxic volumes.