LEARNING OUTCOMES

The course intends to describe the mathematical modeling of two very important tomographic problems in the medical field: X-ray tomography and microwave tomography. In both cases, the objective of the discussion is twofold: on the one hand, to emphasize how sophisticated mathematical formalisms are indispensable for the understanding of two problems of such great application value; On the other hand, provide students with the numeric tools needed to process the images from these capture modes.

AIMS AND LEARNING OUTCOMES

This course aims to describe the mathematical modeling of three medical imaging problems: the X-ray tomography, the Positron Emission Tomography and the Magnetic Resonance Imaging. The scope of the course is two-fold: on one hand, we want to highlight how sophisticated mathematics is needed for the comprehension of problems with high practical significance; on the other hand, we want to equip the students with the numerical analysis tools required for the processing of the data acquired with these three modalities.

TEACHING METHODS

Traditional lectures. Six lab lessons are planned

SYLLABUS/CONTENT

Part I: X-ray tomography (overview); Radon transform, formulas for the inversion of the Radon transform (as back projection and filtered back projection), issues of uniqueness.

Part II: positron emission tomography (overview); on the two inverse problems related to positron emission tomography: an imaging problem (inversion of the Radon transform) and a compartment alone (Gauss-Newton optimization scheme)

Part III: magnetic resonance imaging (overview); models for data acquisition and magnetic field distortion, Fourier transform, inversion of the Fourier transform from undersampled data.

RECOMMENDED READING/BIBLIOGRAPHY

Professor’s lecture notes