This was another productive year for research in the Department of Radiology, with more than 100 publications and close to 30 grant applications, many of them successful. In the last quarter alone, Radiology primary investigators have secured more than $2.6M in direct costs. This was also a year to strengthen our research enterprise and to improve our Radiology research resource interface with local and outside collaborators with a website overhaul.
One of our most exciting new research frontiers is image-based artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning models. Led within Radiology by Samuel Brady, PhD, and Elan Somasundaram, PhD, radiology clinical and research faculty and staff are working to apply machine learning techniques to the institution’s vast repositories of imaging data. Machine learning has great potential in diagnosis of disease versus normal, and AI can help in many ways, including improvement of image quality. Read about this groundbreaking research here.
Our body imaging radiologists had more than 50 publications last year, and they continue to lead the field in novel research into detection and quantification of disease in children with liver, pancreatic, and intestinal diseases. Under the guidance of Dr. Jonathan Dillman and Dr. Andrew Trout, Nathan Northern, a University of Cincinnati medical student, demonstrated the clinical effectiveness of ultrasound shear wave elastography (learn more here). Drs. Dillman and Trout (and other colleagues) validated a new MRI method allowing much faster MRI examinations: always an important advance, particularly when imaging children. These doctors, as well as one of our clinical physicists, Dr. Jean Tkach, also published their work showing that MRI-derived liver and spleen stiffness can be used for prognosis in children with primary sclerosing cholangitis and autoimmune hepatitis. This work will lead to better targeted therapies for children at risk of complications.
Radiology’s close collaboration with Pulmonology and the Center for Pulmonary Imaging Research (CPIR) continues. Recent translational work highlighted the direct clinical relevance of imaging in the youngest children. In particular, quiet-breathing neonatal pulmonary MRI has been shown to be effective and accurate in predicting disease severity and short-term outcomes in babies with a structural abnormality called bronchopulmonary dysplasia, or BPD. Importantly, this nonionizing (non-radiation) technique can be used to characterize disease and has the potential to be used safely at multiple time-points to assess efficacy of individualized therapies.
Musculoskeletal radiologists have been involved in a number of successful projects, including Magnetic Resonance Imaging of developing bones (Kathleen H Emery, MD & Deborah Brahee, MD). This work resulted in a poster at the meeting of the Society for Pediatric Radiology. Dr. Emery is also participating in two large cooperative research projects; JUPITER(Justifying Patellar Instability Treatment by Early Results) and A Bioinspired Approach to Large Pediatric Osteochondral Injuries (OCIs). In addition, Dr. Hee Kim has published some of her collaborative research on patellofemoral instability.
We are looking forward to a productive and successful FY2020!
Contributed by Gail Pyne-Geithman, (Medical Writer) and edited by Glenn Miñano, BFA.
