Platform Grant for the University of Birmingham Positron Imaging Centre

正电子成像中心使用放射性示踪剂来研究工程师感兴趣的流，这是正电子发射断层扫描（PET）医学成像技术的一种变体。我们的大多数研究使用了伯明翰开发的正电子发射粒子跟踪（PEPT）替代技术，其中单个放射性粒子在流动系统内高速跟踪。这项工作中使用的短寿命放射性同位素是使用伯明翰回旋加速器生产的，并且已经开发了各种新技术来标记具有适当放射性的单个颗粒（小到直径100微米）。标准的医用PET扫描仪已经适应了这些研究，除了各种内部测量系统外，最近还开发了一种可移动的探测器系统，允许在大型工业工厂进行PET测量。正电子成像中心作为一个国家资源，学术和工业团体可以在这里研究他们感兴趣的系统，并欢迎来自世界各地许多机构和不同学科的合作者。应用范围从涉及颗粒材料或液体的简单流动情况的基础研究到用于加工食品，药品等工业的实际设备的测量。这些研究的一个重要作用是测试用于预测复杂流动的计算机代码的准确性。在未来，PET和PEPT将越来越多地与其他互补测量技术一起使用，以揭示系统行为的更复杂特性。虽然个人研究项目的资金来自适当的来源，但我们的平台赠款用于促进合作，留住关键员工和开发基础设施（特别是示踪剂标签技术），以便我们能够将我们独特的技术应用于尽可能广泛的问题。

The Positron Imaging Centre uses radioactive tracers to study flows of interest to engineers, in a variant of the medical imaging technique of positron emission tomography (PET). Most of our studies use the alternative technique of positron emission particle tracking (PEPT), developed at Birmingham, in which a single radioactive particle is tracked at high speed inside a flow system. The short-lived radioisotopes used for this work are produced using the Birmingham cyclotron, and various novel techniques have been developed for labelling individual particles (as small as 100 micrometres diameter) with suitable radioactivity. Standard medical PET scanners have been adapted to perform these studies, and in addition to various in-house measurement systems a transportable detector system has recently been developed allowing PEPT measurements to be carried out on large scale industrial plant. The Positron Imaging Centre operates as a national resource where academic and industrial groups can study the systems of specific interest to them, and welcomes collaborators from many institutions around the world and from a diverse range of academic disciplines. Applications range from fundamental studies of simple flow situations involving granular materials or liquids to measurements on the actual equipment used in industry for processing foodstuffs, pharmaceuticals, etc. An important role for these studies is testing the accuracy of computer codes used for predicting complex flows. In future PET and PEPT will be increasingly used in conjunction with other complementary measurement techniques to reveal more complex properties of the behaviour of systems. While individual research projects are funded from appropriate sources, our Platform Grant is used to foster collaborations, to retain key staff and to develop the infrastructure (in particular the tracer labelling techniques) in order that we can apply our unique techniques to the widest possible range of problems.