Seminar April 16TH, 2024
Hours: 16:30 - 18:00
INTERNATIONAL INVITED SPEAKER
Li Feng, PhD
TITLE: Rapid MRI with Intelligent Image Acquisition, Reconstruction and Quantification
ABSTRACT: Modern MRI exams resemble carefully-staged photo shoots, with significant effort and time devoted to capturing just the right image. Given the diverse range of MRI acquisitions and the adjustments needed to accommodate different types of motion, tailored imaging protocols aimed at addressing specific clinical questions are typically collected as a sequential series of snapshots. This cumbersome imaging paradigm, largely unchanged for decades, represents a significant challenge for the ultimate utility of MRI in many clinical applications. Over the past decade, our research team at NYU has been aiming to change the current workflow of MRI by developing novel approaches that allow for rapid, continuous and comprehensive data acquisitions. One such technique is the GRASP (Golden-angle RAdial Sparse Parallel) MRI method, which was developed for rapid free-breathing dynamic MRI and has been applied to over 150,000 clinical patients at NYU alone to date. In this talk, I will present the recent advances of rapid MRI research at NYU and also discuss new research directions we have been exploring.
SHORT BIO: Dr. Li Feng completed his PhD (2009-2015) and postdoctoral training (2015-2018) at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine. Subsequently, he served as an MRI physicist at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) for one year before establishing his own lab at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where he began as an Assistant Professor of Radiology in 2019 and was promoted to Associate Professor of Radiology in 2022. In early 2023, Dr. Feng returned to NYU to take a new role as the Director of Rapid Imaging in the Department of Radiology, where he oversees general research on fast MRI.
iHEALTH SPEAKER
Diego Pedraza
TITLE: "Cardiac MRF for Simultaneous T1, T2 and Fat-Fraction Quantification at 0.55 T"
ABSTRACT: Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Fingerprinting (MRF) is a promising technique that enables simultaneous quantitative myocardial tissue characterization in a single scan. Cardiac MRF has been evaluated at 1.5T and 3T, however, it has not been demonstrated at lower-field strength systems. Here, we propose a cardiac MRF sequence for simultaneous T1, T2 and fat-fraction (FF) myocardial quantification at 0.55T in a single breath-hold scan. The proposed sequence was evaluated in standardized phantoms and on 10 healthy volunteers and results were compared against spin echo and proton density references (phantoms) and against previously reported T1, T2 and FF literature values for healthy subjects. Phantom experiments showed good agreement with reference values. In-vivo results show good map quality and good agreement with literature values. Good intra and inter-session reproducibility was observed in phantoms and in-vivo. Further studies are now required to validate the proposed sequence in a larger cohort of healthy subjects and patients with cardiovascular disease.
SHORT BIO: Diego Pedraza is a PhD student at the Institute for Biological and Medical Engineering at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. He received his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering at the same Institution. His research focuses on MRI pulse sequence design and image reconstruction in the context of quantitative MRI techniques, such as Magnetic Resonance Fingerprinting (MRF).
