This planning grant will concentrate on obtaining preliminary data to support the writing of a full proposal concerning the quantitative imaging of regional pulmonary blood flow. The final goal is to study the three-dimensional distribution of pulmonary blood flow using single photon emission tomography (SPECT) which has been corrected for attenuation effects and which has been collected using respiratory gating techniques. During the planning grant the PI will concentrate on constructing a physical model of the pulmonary system, developing algorithms for attenuation correction and techniques for respiratory gating and learning methods to manipulate SPECT data. This project is very timely since it deals with the analysis of 3-D image data. The proposal is well-written and the approaches that will be used are justified. The preliminary studies should help develop a competitive full-proposal in the field of SPECT medical imaging.
