Suzanne Baker

Divisions

Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Bioimaging

• Cellular and Tissue Imaging

Biography

Suzanne Baker got her undergraduate degree in Biomedical Engineering from Tulane University and her PhD in Vision Science at University of California, Berkeley combining information from dipole source localization using EEG and fMRI.  The focus of her postdoc was on distortion correction in echo planar imaging (fMRI).

After her postdoc she was hired at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) to work for Bill Jagust where her primary responsibility was accurate PET quantification.  At LBNL, she got the opportunity to learn about PET scanners and imaging from Ron Huesman and Bill Moses.  In addition to applying and acquiring knowledge of image processing to PET, she also enjoyed dabbling in the world of instrumentation and was tasked with keeping the old Siemens (CTI) HR running.  She designed all aspects of PET data analysis in the Jagust lab, including detecting/fixing PET/CT overlay, DVR/SUVR/SRTM quantification, and partial volume correction.

Suzanne is experienced in PET analysis for multi-center studies.  She has served as the PET core (quality assurance and PET data analysis) for multisite studies (NGF, NIFD, 4RTNI), and works with Bob Koeppe on PET quality assurance for SCAN.

Currently Suzanne’s focus is on minimizing noise in cross-sectional and longitudinal tau imaging.  She and Tharick Pascoal are the PIs of an R01 to acquire head-to-head longitudinal tau PET data using MK6240 and Flortaucipir in over 600 participants at 8 different imaging sites with the purpose of comparing and harmonizing longitudinal change measured by these tau PET tracers.

Research Interests

My primary interest is the optimization quantification of PET imaging signal. I work in the field of aging and dementia and focus on:
– pharmacokinetic modeling
– partial volume correction
– analysis of multi-site data
– tracer comparison
– optimization of longitudinal measurements
– reference region analysis