Bruce Hasegawa Memorial Lecture: "Multimodality Imaging: A Look Back to the Future"

David W. Townsend obtained his B.Sc in Physics from Bristol University and his Ph.D. in Particle Physics from the University of London and was a staff member for eight years at the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland.  In 1980, Dr Townsend joined the faculty of Geneva University Hospital as a physicist in the Department of Nuclear Medicine.  He has worked on PET instrumentation development since the early eighties, and designed and built the first rotating partial ring PET scanner using BGO block detectors. In 1993, Dr Townsend moved to the University of Pittsburgh as an Associate Professor of Radiology and Senior PET Physicist. He was Co-Director of the Pittsburgh PET Facility from 1996-2002, and became Professor of Radiology in 2000.  In 1995, Dr Townsend was Principal Investigator on the first proposal to design and build a combined PET/CT scanner.  The PET/CT scanner, attributed to Dr Townsend and Dr Nutt, then President of CPS Innovations, was named by TIME Magazine as the medical invention of the year 2000. In recognition of his work on PET/CT, Dr Townsend received the 2004 Distinguished Clinical Scientist Award from the Academy of Molecular Imaging, and the 2008 Nuclear Medicine Pioneer Award from the Austrian Society of Nuclear Medicine. In 2006, he was elected a Fellow of the IEEE and in 2009 received an honorary doctorate from the University of the Mediterranean, Marseille, France. He shared with Dr Ron Nutt the 2010 IEEE Medal for Innovations in Healthcare Technology. From February 2003 to 2009, Dr Townsend was Professor of Medicine and Radiology, and Director of the Molecular Imaging and Translational Research Program at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. In July 2009, he became Head of PET and SPECT Development for the Singapore Bioimaging Consortium, Professor of Radiology at the National University of Singapore and was appointed Director of the A*STAR-NUS Clinical Imaging Research Center, Singapore in December 2010. In 2012, Dr Townsend was elected an Honorary Fellow of the UK Royal College of Radiologists and he also received the Vikram Sarabhai Distinguished Oration Award from the Indian Society of Nuclear Medicine. In 2013, he presented the Ninth FY Khoo Memorial Lecture at the annual meeting of the Singapore College of Radiologists. In July, 2013 he received an honorary D.Sc. from the University of Bristol in the UK and in December he gave the Eighth John Cameron Memorial Lecture at the International Society of Medical Physicists meeting in Singapore. In 2014, Dr Townsend was presented with the MILabs Advanced Imaging Scientist Award by MILabs in Utrecht, The Netherlands. His current research areas include the applications of hybrid imaging technology in oncology, particularly low radiation dose imaging. He has co-authored over 170 peer-reviewed papers on nuclear physics and medical imaging technology, and is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Nuclear Medicine. In 2015, Dr Townsend received the prestigious Paul C. Aebersold Award from the International Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging in the US for 3D PET and PET/CT development.