Dr Charalampos Tsoumpas

Profile

Charalampos (Harry) Tsoumpas is currently a Professor of “Quantification in Molecular Diagnostics & Radionuclide Therapy” at the University of Groningen (the Netherlands) whilst he maintains an Honorary Lecturer appointment at the University of Leeds. Previously he was a Royal Society Industry Fellow (2018-2021) and Lecturer of Medical Imaging at the University of Leeds from 2013 to 2021. He is also an Adjunct Professor with the Biomedical Engineering & Imaging Institute at Mount Sinai, New York since 2014. He received his PhD degree on the "Direct statistical parametric image estimation for linear pharmacokinetic models from quantitative positron emission tomography measurements" from Imperial College London in 2008 and worked as a post-doctoral fellow at King’s College London on PET-MRI from 2008 to 2013. He is Fellow of the Institute of Physics (IOP), Fellow of the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine (IPEM), Fellow of Higher Education Academy, Senior Member of IEEE, Member of the European Society for Molecular Imaging (ESMI) and Member of the IEEE Nuclear & Plasma Sciences Society. He has contributions in more than 100 peer-reviewed papers, 50 conference papers, 150 conference abstracts, two scientific magazine articles, two book chapters and two awarded international patents.

Responsibilities

• PhD Supervisor
• Leeds Team Leader for Crystal Clear Collaboration

Research interests

Dr Tsoumpas interests revolve around the research methodology for quantitative Positron Emission Tomography (PET). He is passionate in pioneering the development of human molecular imaging with PET for the creation of cutting edge technologies that will significantly evolve clinical research and healthcare in several fields of Biomedicine.

Recent Projects

Four years Royal Society Industry Fellowship to work with Invicro (now part of Konica Minolta) on Novel Reconstruction Algorithms.

STIR: Software for Tomographic Image Reconstruction: This is the most widely used open access software for PET image reconstruction. Its main publication, Thielemans, Tsoumpas, et al (2012), received the 2017 Rotblat Medal as the most cited research paper published by Physics in Medicine & Biology (IOP & IPEM) from 2012 to 2017. Dr Tsoumpas is co-administrator and member of the development team. He co-organises annually the corresponding users’ & developers’ meeting during the IEEE Medical Imaging Conference. 

CCP-SyneRBI: Dr Tsoumpas was a co-investigator of this collaborative computational project which aims at developing a platform for synergistic image reconstruction. In addition, Dr Tsoumpas was a co-investigator of the related Flagship Project which aims to develop a framework for efficient synergistic spatiotemporal reconstruction of PET-MR dynamic data. He co-organised Training Schools and Workshops on this theme. Both projects have been led by Professor Kris Thielemans (UCL) and funded by EPSRC.

SAFIR: An active collaboration led by ETH Zurich which aims to building an innovative, high rate PET insert for MRI to be used for quantitative dynamic small animal imaging inside the bore of a commercial 7T MRI preclinical Bruker 70/30 scanner at the University Zurich. The project targets an unprecedented temporal resolution (about 5 seconds) and truly simultaneous PET/MR acquisition.

Cardiovascular PET-MR Imaging: This is an area of research led by Professor Zahi A. Fayad, Director of the Biomedical Engineering & Imaging Institute, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, where Dr Tsoumpas holds an Adjunct Professor appointment on PET-MR.

Crystal Clear: An active international academic research collaboration initiated and managed at CERN. Among many research areas it is involved in the research and development of novel materials for medical imaging.

Qualifications

• PhD in Biomedical Imaging Science
• MSc in Biomedical Engineering
• MPhys in Physics
• PGC in Academic Practice

Professional memberships

• Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (Senior Member)
• Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine (Fellow)
• Institute of Physics (Fellow)
• European Society of Molecular Imaging
• Higher Educational Academy (Fellow)

Student education

I teach courses at the Schools of Physics, Engineering and Medicine.

Furthermore, I always look for PhD candidates, especially of Mathematical, Computational, Engineering, Physics background, so if interested in my research, contact me without any second thought! My first two PhD students in Leeds received the prestigious IEEE NPSS Graduate Student award in 2019 (Dr Daniel Deidda) and 2020 (Dr Mercy Akerele). And all my past PhD students have thriving careers in academia and industry.

Research groups and institutes

• Leeds Institute of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Medicine
• Biomedical Imaging Science
• British Heart Foundation - Cardiovascular research