RESEARCH LINE
Metabolic-driven Medical Physics
Medical physics is where a physical measurement becomes a clinical decision. In this research line we make clinical and preclinical imaging quantitative — positron emission tomography and multispectral optoacoustic tomography — and turn the raw signal into parameters a physician can act on.
01 · NUCLEAR MEDICINE
Quantitative PET and machine learning
Dynamic PET carries more information than a static uptake map: the time course of tracer accumulation in each voxel reflects transport and metabolism.
Together with nuclear medicine, we showed that machine-learning models trained on dynamic PET data can detect and classify tumour histotypes automatically — from the kinetics of each voxel, rather than from a single frame.
Bianchetti, G.; Taralli, S.; Vaccaro, M.; Indovina, L.; Mattoli, M.V.; Capotosti, A.; Scolozzi, V.; Calcagni, M.L.; Giordano, A.; De Spirito, M.; Maulucci, G. Automated detection and classification of tumor histotypes on dynamic PET imaging data through machine-learning driven voxel classification. Computers in Biology and Medicine 2022, 145, 105423. (DOI: 10.1016/j.compbiomed.2022.105423)
Dynamic PET: kinetics in every voxel. Fig. 1 from Bianchetti et al., Comput. Biol. Med. 2022 (CC BY-NC-ND).
MSOT: real-time spectral unmixing. Fig. 2 from Di Giacinto et al., Comput. Biol. Med. 2025 (CC BY-NC-ND).
02 · TOMOGRAPHIC IMAGING
Multispectral optoacoustic tomography
MSOT combines the contrast of optical absorption with the penetration depth of ultrasound. Its quantitative use depends on separating overlapping spectral signatures: oxygenated and deoxygenated haemoglobin, lipids, contrast agents.
We introduced a phasor-based method that performs this unmixing in real time, without assuming in advance how many components are present.
Di Giacinto, F.; Riente, A.; Mignini, I.; Ainora, M.E.; Esposto, G.; Borriello, R.; Zocco, M.A.; Minordi, L.M.; Sala, E.; Scaldaferri, F.; Gasbarrini, A.; De Spirito, M.; Maulucci, G. Advancing multispectral optoacoustic tomography (MSOT): phasor analysis for real-time spectral unmixing. Computers in Biology and Medicine 2025, 195, 110586. (DOI: 10.1016/j.compbiomed.2025.110586)
Frequently asked questions
What does "metabolic-driven medical physics" mean?
Using quantitative imaging physics to read metabolism in the clinical setting rather than in a cell culture: PET and multispectral optoacoustic tomography, with the analysis methods that turn those images into numbers. It is one of the research lines of the Metabolic Intelligence Lab at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Rome, and it is carried out with hospital partners.
Which imaging modalities does this line use?
Positron emission tomography (PET) and multispectral optoacoustic tomography (MSOT). PET gives the metabolic signal at the level of the whole body or organ; MSOT resolves optical absorbers in tissue with ultrasound detection, which makes it useful where fluorescence microscopy cannot reach.
What has been published on it?
Two methodological papers in Computers in Biology and Medicine: the automated detection and classification of tumours (DOI 10.1016/j.compbiomed.2022.105423) and the advancement of multispectral optoacoustic tomography (DOI 10.1016/j.compbiomed.2025.110586). Both DOIs are linked on this page.
Is this a clinical service?
No. These are research methods developed and validated together with clinical partners, published in peer-reviewed journals. They are not offered as a diagnostic service to patients.
The complete list of publications behind this research line is on the Publications page.