Javier Caravaca Rodriguez, PhD
Research Associate
Radiology
School of Medicine
With my background in nuclear and particle physics, and expertise in particle detectors, I develop cutting-edge radiation detectors to improve current diagnosis and therapy techniques for a number of diseases, including cancer. My main interests are exploring novel designs for SPECT and PET systems to improve their performance and expand their range of application to other pathologies.
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In particular, I develop new SPECT detectors for alpha and beta theranostics, explore new avenues of exploiting Cherenkov light in TOF-PET, and spearhead Monte Carlo techniques to improve dosimetry in preclinical radiation therapy.
Awards
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- Breakthrough Prize, 2016
Education & Training
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- Postdoctoral Neutrino Physics University of California, Berkeley 08/2020
- PhD Experimental Particle Physics University Autonomous of Barcelona 07/2014
- MSc Particle Physics and Cosmology University of Barcelona 06/2010
- B.S. Physics University of Granada 07/2009
Interests
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- PET
- SPECT
- Cancer imaging
- Compton imaging
- Theranostics
Websites
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- ResearchGate (researchgate.net)
- Physics Research Laboratory (radiology.ucsf.edu)
- COBRA (bayareacobra.org)
- GitHub (github.com)
- Personal site (javiercaravacaphd.com)
- taste of science East Bay [Outreach non-profit] (tasteofscience.org)
- LinkedIn (linkedin.com)
Videos
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Grants and Projects
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- A high sensitivity gamma camera using a combination of Compton reconstruction and source proximity for in-vivo imaging of Ac-225, NIH, 2022-2026
- Leveraging ultra-fast Cherenkov emission in scintillator-based TOF-PET by exploiting photon wavelength sorting, NIH, 2022-2025
- First quantitative in vivo imaging of 225Ac with a collimatorless gamma camera, UCSF Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, 2021-2022
Publications (8)
Top publication keywords:
Tomography, X-Ray ComputedMiceMonte Carlo MethodTomography, Emission-Computed, Single-PhotonAnimalsComputer SimulationMotivationImage Processing, Computer-AssistedActiniumSingle Photon Emission Computed Tomography Computed TomographyMice, NudeLikelihood FunctionsAlgorithmsPhantoms, Imaging
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Clinical Imaging of 225Ac in a PET Scanner via Time-of-Flight Cascade γ-Ray Imaging.
Journal of nuclear medicine : official publication, Society of Nuclear Medicine 2026 Caravaca J, Seo Y, Cabello J, Siegel SB, Flavell RR, Hope TA -
Quantitative SPECT imaging of 225Ac and its daughters in mice in vivo.
Medical physics 2026 Du S, Bobba KN, Peter R, Gullberg GT, Flavell RR, Caravaca J, Seo Y -
Performance Evaluation of Single- and Double-Layer CZT Compton Cameras for 225Ac Imaging.
IEEE transactions on nuclear science 2026 Song G, Das B, Seo Y, Cho G, Caravaca J -
Compton Imaging of Ac-225 In Pre-clinical Phantoms With a 3D-positioning CZT Camera.
IEEE transactions on radiation and plasma medical sciences 2025 Das B, Mehrdel B, Goodman D, Streicher M, Seo Y, Caravaca J -
Enhancing the Cherenkov over scintillation ratio using dichroic filters in BGO and TlCl for TOF-PET.
Scientific reports 2025 Mehrdel B, Kratochwil N, Seo Y, Glodo J, Bhattacharya P, Ariño-Estrada G, Caravaca J -
Individual and Simultaneous Imaging of 99m Tc and 177Lu with a Preclinical Broad Energy-Spectrum CZT-based SPECT.
IEEE transactions on radiation and plasma medical sciences 2025 Encarnação PMCC, Correia PMM, Mehrdel B, Bredwell I, Veloso JFCA, Caravaca J, Seo Y -
A Technique to Quantify Very Low Activities in Regions of Interest With a Collimatorless Detector.
IEEE transactions on medical imaging 2024 Caravaca J, Bobba KN, Du S, Peter R, Gullberg GT, Bidkar AP, Flavell RR, Seo Y -
A generalization of the maximum likelihood expectation maximization (MLEM) method: Masked-MLEM.
Physics in medicine and biology 2023 Zheng Y, Frame E, Caravaca J, Gullberg GT, Vetter K, Seo Y