Research Assistant - London, United Kingdom - University College London

University College London

Verified Company

London, United Kingdom

3 weeks ago

Posted by:

Tom O´Connor

beBee Recruiter

Description

Ref Number
B

Professional Expertise
Research and Research Support

Department
School of Life & Medical Sciences (B02)

Location
London

Working Pattern
Full time

Salary
See advert text

Contract Type
Fixed-term

Working Type
On site (> 80% of working time)

Available For Secondment
No

Closing Date
16-Aug-2023

About us:

The Institute of Nuclear Medicine at UCL/H is a world-leading centre for both clinical practice and research into advanced data processing methods, and lead an international collaboration on open source software development for image reconstruction (CCP SyneRBI).

This post fits in a collaboration with the Barts Heart Centre.

About the role:

This is a fixed-term post (5.5 months) for a Research Assistant to establish a software pipeline for improved assessment of coronary plaque inflammation through motion correction of dual-gated PET/CT data.

Please note that salary will be on the UCL Grade 6B point 25 (currently £36,832 per annum).

Project Background:

Positron emission tomography (PET), utilizing radionuclide-labelled tracers, is an established clinical tool in the evaluation of a range of common and/or important diseases in the heart, such as ischaemic heart disease and inflammatory cardiac myopathy.

A hurdle to further improved PET imaging performance is the complex dual cardiac and respiratory movement, which blurs the relevant PET signal from the tracer, introduces attenuation artefacts and precludes accurate co-registration of the PET imaging signal to multimodality structural imaging findings.

Solutions using data rejection (dual-gating) are commercially available but lead to either low image quality or high dose requirements.

Compensation to the respiratory component only is available on some scanners, but is designed for oncological imaging and cannot be used in conjunction with cardiac motion management.

Several techniques that handle both types of motion have been proposed in the research literature, but with limited evaluation.

Project aims and methodology:

1. establish a pipeline for fully quantitative PET reconstruction cardiac PET/CT data that includes respiratory and cardiac motion correction.
2. validate this pipeline in an exemplar project using coronary artery plaque imaging.

A job description and person specification can be accessed at the bottom of this page.

About you:

Programming experience in Python in imaging is essential, C++ experience would be highly beneficial as well as an understanding of containerisation using Docker.

What we offer:

This is an exciting opportunity to join a multidisciplinary team working across the Division of Medicine.

As well as the exciting opportunities this role presents, we also offer some great benefits some of which are below:

41 Days holiday (27 days annual leave 8 bank holiday and 6 closure days)
Additional 5 days' annual leave purchase scheme
Defined benefit career average revalued earnings pension scheme (CARE)
Cycle to work scheme and season ticket loan
Immigration loan
Relocation scheme for certain posts
On-Site nursery
Onsite gym
Enhanced maternity, paternity and adoption pay
Employee assistance programme: Staff Support Service
Discounted medical insurance

Our commitment to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion:

As London's Global University, we know diversity fosters creativity and innovation, and we want our community to represent the diversity of the world's talent.

We are committed to equality of opportunity, to being fair and inclusive, and to being a place where we all belong.

Our department holds an Athena SWAN Silver award, in recognition of our commitment and demonstrable impact in advancing gender equality.