One of the Center’s newest senior faculty members, Julie Price, PhD, brings to the Martinos community a wealth of experience with quantitative positron emission tomography (PET). With this technique, researchers study the dynamics of the PET radiotracer in vivo in order to obtain absolute measurement of functional processes: the binding capacity of neuroreceptors, glucose metabolism, blood flow, enzyme activity and more.
Quantitative PET studies have played an important role in improving our understanding of the physiology of the living human brain in both health and disease. A number of application areas benefit from such studies. These include healthy brain function and aging, sleep, depression, eating disorders, brain injury and diabetes, among other areas. Dr. Price’s work currently focuses on neurodegeneration, simultaneous PET-MR and early risk factors for Type 2 Diabetes.