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The Department of Mathematics at University of Texas at Arlington will be hosting an NSF-CBMS Conference on Mathematical Methods of Computed Tomography during May 29-June 2, 2012 sponsored by the National Science Foundation. This conference will feature Distinguished Professor Peter Kuchment of Texas A&M University, who will deliver ten lectures on the mathematics of tomographic imaging. Professor Kuchment's lectures will be supplemented by Professor Leonid Kunyansky of University of Arizona, who will lecture on the algorithmic and numerical aspects of tomography, and Professor David Isaacson of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, who will lecture on electrical impedance imaging.

The CBMS lectures will be delivered in PKH 304 (room 304 in Pickard Hall). The lunches, the coffee breaks, the informal discussions, and the poster displays will take place in PKH 308 (room 308 in Pickard Hall). To arrive in PKH 304 or PKH 308, please take the elevator to the third floor in Pickard Hall, and after getting off the elevator please make a right turn and walk along the corridor until you see room 304 or room 308, respectively, on the right. Most of our noncommuting participants will be staying at the Kalpana Chawla Hall, indicated by KC on the campus map, which is just to the east of Pickard Hall. The noncommuting participants can directly walk to Pickard Hall by crossing the parking lot indicated as 47 on the campus map. With the appropriate prearrangments made, our volunteering graduate students in the organizing committee will meet the participants arriving by plane at their arrival airport and will bring them to the Kalpana Chawla Hall. Those participants who bring a car with them, unless they have a parking permit already, can pick up a parking permit from Ms. Vishti Maharaj when they check in at the Kalpana Chawla Hall upon their arrival on Monday, May 28. Alternatively, a parking permit can be obtained from Ms. Vishti Maharaj in PKH 308 on Tuesday, May 29. The permit allows the participants to park in the lots indicated as 47, 49, and 52 on the campus map.

The goal of computed tomography is to recover the interior structure of a nontransparent object by using external measurements. One of its major applications is in medical diagnostic imaging, where several more classical as well as newly developed techniques (X-ray CT scan, MRI, PET, SPECT, etc.) strive to recover the internal distribution of various tissue parameters such as density, water content, oxygenation, hemoglobin content, electrical conductivity, optical absorption and scattering coefficients, and stiffness. Knowledge of these parameters plays a crucial roles in medical diagnostics, in particular, in early cancer and pulmonary edema detection. In such applications the so-called tomogram (the map of the internal distribution of parameters of interest) is obtained not by direct measurements, but rather by applying mathematical techniques to the externally measured data to extract the image. Thus, sophisticated mathematics plays a crucial role, without which no tomographic scanners would have been possible.

Medical imaging is not the sole area of applications of computed tomography. One can also mention as heavy users of tomographic methods geophysics, industrial non-destructive testing, and homeland security.

The lectures will survey, starting from basics, the major mathematical techniques and ideas in the field, as well as outline the current directions and main open problems. The participants are expected to include both established researchers and interested newcomers. The organizers are interested in particular in attracting postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, and traditionally underrepresented groups. The conference will facilitate the interaction between the participants, promote interdisciplinary work and collaborations, and stimulate the regional research activity in an atmosphere conducive to establishing long term collaborations.

Established researchers, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students are all welcome to attend. Financial support for about 25-30 participants will be provided. We request the participants to pay a registration fee of $50 to cover certain expenses that cannot be covered by the NSF funds.

The noncommuting participants are expected to arrive on May 28, 2012 and depart in the afternoon of June 2, 2012 (a flight departure of 2:00 pm or later).

To apply, please fill out the online application form soon and send us a brief vita/resume. Graduate student applicants should also ask their advisors to send us a recommendation letter. The deadline for application (including the receipt of brief vita and a support letter if applicable) is February 15, 2012. Our funding does not allow us to support applicants from institutions abroad.

More information on the conference will be available at this conference webpage, which will be updated regularly. The contact persons for this NSF-CBMS conference are Prof. Tuncay Aktosun (e-mail: aktosun@uta.edu), Prof. Gaik Ambartsoumian (e-mail: gambarts@uta.edu), and Prof. Julianne Chung (e-mail: chungj@uta.edu).