Total-body PET Scanner

Dr. Karp is Professor of Radiologic Physics in the Department of Radiology, and in the Department of Physics & Astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania. He is Chief of the Physics and Instrumentation Research Group in Radiology and directs Nuclear Medicine/PET Physics and QC in the clinic, as well as the Small Animal Imaging Facility Nuclear Medicine (PET/SPECT/CT) core. He received his PhD in nuclear physics from MIT in 1980 and joined the faculty at Penn in 1983, and since then his research has focused on investigations to improve and characterize the performance of PET technology, including front-end electronics, detector design, data correction techniques, and 3D image reconstruction algorithms. This work has resulted in development of fully 3D PET scanners and innovative imaging systems based on various scintillation detectors, and some of these concepts have been implemented commercially for human and animal imaging. Dr. Karp has developed systems for time-of-flight (TOF) imaging, and his work with industry led to adoption of TOF in modern PET/CT scanners. Dr. Karp collaborates with UC Davis as part of the Explorer Consortium and is leading the team at U Penn in the development of the large axial FOV PennPET Explorer instrument. Dr. Karp has helped to organize scientific programs in the Society of Nuclear Medicine and the IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society, as well as the Explorer Workshop at U Penn in fall 2017.