IMAGING CORE The Penn PET Addiction Center of Excellence (PACE) Imaging Core will support the design, implementation, execution, and analysis of the PET imaging components of the Center's pilot projects. The Imaging Core will function as a resource for expertise and guidance for investigators and will also serve as a functioning platform to provide services for P30 investigators that include imaging study design, imaging study execution including imaging-related patient coordination, image analysis, PET image data archiving, and regulatory support. As such, the Imaging Core will work closely with the other Cores and the PIs of the P30 Core Center's pilot projects to support the Center's mission in drug addiction research and to expand the scope of PET imaging for research on opiate use disorders at Penn and Yale University.
Specific aims of the Imaging Core include: 1) to design the PET components of the Penn PACE pilot core projects; 2) to coordinate and execute PET imaging studies proposed in the Pilot Core at Penn and at Yale; 3) to guide and execute PET image analyses, including kinetic analysis and novel image analysis approaches; and (4) to guide and support regulatory submissions and provide oversight of imaging studies by working closely with the other Cores on data and safety monitoring for the PET imaging component of Pilot Core projects. The Imaging Core is co-led by Dr. David Mankoff of Penn and Dr. Richard Carson of the Yale University PET Center. The Imaging Core takes advantage of a highly developed infrastructure for human PET imaging research at both the Penn and the Yale University PET Centers. The core also benefits from synergistic expertise at Penn (multi-center clinical trials, protocol development, regulatory infrastructure) and Yale (molecular brain imaging methodology, tracer kinetic analysis). The Core has a unusual depth of combined depth of expertise in PET instrumentation physics, image generation, and data analysis ? along with dedicated unique scanner resources- to support the scientific mission of this P30 Center.
