Appointments and affiliations
Medical Physicist
Department of Nuclear Cardiology
University of Ottawa Heart Institute
Associate Professor
Division of Cardiology
University of Ottawa
Adjunct Professor
Department of Physics
Carleton University
Dr. Glenn Wells is a medical physicist in the Department of Nuclear Cardiology at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute, an associate professor in the Division of Cardiology at the University of Ottawa, and an adjunct professor in the Department of Physics at Carleton University. He is also the director of SPECT Research at the UOHI. Dr. Wells is also a member of the Ottawa Medical Physics Institute (OMPI).
Background
Dr. Wells received a BSc in physics in 1991 from the University of Calgary in Alberta. He received an MSc in physics (general relativity) in 1994 and a PhD in medical physics (SPECT Imaging) in 1997, both from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. He pursued post-doctoral research in SPECT imaging at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in Worcester until 2000, when he took a position as a medical physicist with St. Joseph’s Hospital and the Lawson Health Research Institute in London, Ontario. In 2006, he joined the Nuclear Cardiology Department at the Heart Institute.
Dr. Wells is vice-president of the Physics, Instrumentation and Data Sciences Council of the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging. He is a member of Working Group 2 (Nuclear Medicine Instrumentation) of the International Electrotechnical Commission Technical Committee 62, sub-committee 62C (2015), which develops international standards for nuclear medicine imaging, and a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Nuclear Cardiology. He is a past member of the board of directors for the Canadian College of Physicists in Medicine (CCPM), the Nuclear and Medical Imaging Sciences Council (NMISC) of the IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Society, and the Imaging Committee of the Canadian Organization of Medical Physicists.
Research and clinical interests
Dr. Wells’ research interests are in the physics of multimodality imaging with nuclear medicine: the combination of multislice X-ray computed tomography (CT) with single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) and positron emission tomography (PET). More specifically, he is interested in the modification of reconstruction algorithms to more accurately correct for attenuation, scatter, cross-talk, camera resolution, and physiological motion. He is also interested in applications of dynamic SPECT with dedicated cardiac SPECT cameras and dose reduction in nuclear medicine. He is applying this research in the fields of small animal SPECT/CT and cardiac clinical SPECT.
Publications
See current publications list at PubMed.
See Research Gate profile.
Selected publications:
- Wells RG, Radonjic I, Clackdoyle D, Do J, Marvin B, Carey C, deKemp RA, Ruddy TD. Test-Retest Precision of Myocardial Blood Flow Measurements With (99m)Tc-Tetrofosmin and Solid-State Detector Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography. Circ Cardiovasc Imaging. 2020 Feb;13(2):e009769. Epub 2020 Feb 11.
- Do J, Ruddy TD, Wells RG. Reduced acquisition times for measurement of myocardial blood flow with 99m Tc-tetrofosmin and solid-state detector SPECT. J Nucl Cardiol. 2020 Feb 5. doi: 10.1007/s12350-020-02048-w. [EPub ahead of print]
- Cuddy-Walsh SG, Wells RG. Noise heterogeneity in attenuation-corrected cardiac SPECT images increases perfusion value uncertainty near the base of the heart. J Nucl Cardiol. 2019 Jul 22. doi: 10.1007/s12350-019-01821-w. [Epub ahead of print]
- Cuddy-Walsh SG, Clackdoyle DC, Renaud JM, Wells RG. Patient-specific SPECT imaging protocols to standardize image noise. J Nucl Cardiol. 2019 Mar 4. doi: 10.1007/s12350-019-01664-5. [Epub ahead of print] Erratum in: J Nucl Cardiol. 2019 Mar 27
- B.G. Abbott, J.A. Case, S. Dorbala, A.J. Einstein, J.R. Galt, R. Pagnanelli, R.P. Bullock-Palmer, P. Soman, R.G. Wells, “Contemporary Cardiac SPECT Imaging – Innovations and Best Practices: An Information Statement from the American Society of Nuclear Cardiology”. Circ Cardiovasc Imaging. 2018;11:e000020.
- S.G. Cuddy-Walsh, R.G. Wells, “Patient-specific estimation of spatially-variant image noise for a pinhole cardiac SPECT camera.” Med Phys 2018 45:2033-2047.
- S. Dorbala, K. Ananthasubramaniam, I.S. Armstrong, P. Chareonthaitawee, E.G. DePuey, A.J. Einstein, R.J. Gropler, T.A. Holly, J.J. Mahmarian, M. Park, D.M. Polk, R. Russell III, P.J. Slomka, R.C. Thompson, R.G. Wells, “Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT)Myocardial Perfusion Imaging Guidelines: Instrumentation, Acquisition, Processing, and Interpretation”. J Nucl Cardiol. 2018 Oct;25(5):1784-1846. [Epub May 25, 2018]
- R.G.Wells, M. Trottier, M. Premaratne, K. Vanderwerf, T.D. Ruddy, “Single CT for attenuation correction of rest/stress cardiac SPECT perfusion imaging”. J Nucl Cardiol. 2018; 25:616-624.
- R.G. Wells, B. Marvin, M. Poirier, J.M. Renaud, R.A. deKemp, T.D. Ruddy, “Optimization of SPECT Measurement of Myocardial Blood Flow with Corrections for Attenuation, Motion, and Blood-Binding Compared to PET.” J Nucl Med. 2017; 58:2013-2019.
- J. Wang, R. Arulanandam, R. Wassenaar, T. Falls, J. Petryk, J. Paget, K. Garson, C. Cemeus, B.C. Vanderhyden, R.G. Wells, J.C. Bell, F. Le Boeuf, “Enhancing expression of functional human sodium iodide symporter and somatostatin receptor in recombinant oncolytic vaccinia virus for in vivo imaging of tumors”. J Nucl Med. 2017; 58(2):221-227. doi: 10.2967/jnumed.116.180463. [Epub 2016 Sep 15].