Julie C. Price

Our research group applies Positron Emission Tomography (PET), molecular imaging principles, and pharmacokinetic modeling methods to measure physiological parameters in vivo to better understand healthy brain function, aging, neuropsychiatric disorders, neurodegeneration, and diabetes.

Current efforts in the group are largely focused on methodology research to improve early PET detection of neuropathological amyloid-beta and tau protein deposition in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Down Syndrome (DS) and to better understand synergistic interactions between these proteins in vivo.  These efforts are strongly collaborative and multimodal in nature, often including simultaneous PET/MR imaging.  Machine learning and deep learning methods are being applied to better understand relationships across multimodal data (imaging and non-imaging outcomes) and obtain more informative functional assessments.  Examples of our collaborative research include “Development and validation of efficient cognitive composite scores of digital tools for the detection of early pathophysiological changes in AD”, "Multivariate statistical framework for biomarker mapping in DS", “Evaluation of correlation and bias for [¹⁸F]MK-6240 tau PET radioligand delivery indices as surrogates of cerebral perfusion, using PET/MR imaging”, “Correspondence between antemortem PET and postmortem neuropathology measures of amyloid and tau deposition in human brain”, and "Exploring mechanisms of altered peripheral glucose uptake in African American women".  This work is primarily funded by the National Institutes of Health.