The research of Nikolaos A. Karakatsanis, Ph.D., focuses on quantitative whole-body dynamic PET to advance the clinical adoption of multi-parametric PET imaging, enhancing diagnostic accuracy and theranostic assessments of human normal and pathological physiology, including applications in oncology, cardiology, and neurology.
Dr. Karakatsanis has developed dynamic PET-driven quantitative methods to improve attenuation correction and dual-radiotracer decoupling in simultaneous PET/MR imaging, primarily for cardiovascular disease evaluations. He is developing cost-effective LAFOV sparse PET detection systems to expand clinical access to total-body dynamic PET imaging.
He has co-authored over 60 peer-reviewed original articles and 90 conference records in national and international scientific meetings. A member of the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI), he served as an intern from 2017 to 2019, a secretary officer from 2019 to 2021, and a board member from 2021 to 2024 in the Physics, Data Sciences, and Instrumentation Council. During his internship, he founded NMMItools.org, a web resource page hosting an up-to-date database of validated commercial and open-source software tools and shareable AI models for nuclear medicine and molecular imaging research. He also leads the Data Models and Dissemination Working Group of the SNMMI Artificial Intelligence Task Force.
Dr. Karakatsanis is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), where he served, and has been serving, as a member-at-large from 2017 to 2020 and 2025 to 2027; he also served as the secretary officer of the IEEE Nuclear Medical Imaging Sciences Council from 2021 to 2024 and as IEEE standards association liaison for the IEEE Nuclear Plasma and Sciences Society. He is certified by the American Board of Science in Nuclear Medicine in nuclear medicine physics and instrumentation. Additionally, he is an associate editor for Frontiers of Medicine and Clinical Imaging and a guest editor for Medical Physics.
Associated Lab Members
Nikolaos (Nicolas) A. Karakatsanis, Ph.D., earned both his master's degree and doctorate in electrical and computer engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece. Previously, he worked as a research scientist at Mount Sinai's Icahn School of Medicine, University Hospitals of Geneva, Switzerland, and Johns Hopkins University Hospital.
The lab is developing a realistic Monte-Carlo (MC) simulation of a dedicated mini-positron emission tomography (PET) cylindrical scanner designed for the direct non-invasive tomographic measurement of the dynamic activity concentration of a PET...
The lab has recently introduced at Weill Cornell Medicine (WCM) the concept of a cost-effective positron emission tomography (PET) detector geometry with adaptable axial field of view (AFOV) via a published series of realistic Monte Carlo simulation...
Prostate cancer is one of the leading causes of cancer death among men in the U.S. and worldwide. The Prostate-Specific Membrane Antigen (PSMA) is a transmembrane protein expressed in all types of prostatic tissue and is broadly recognized as a useful...
