Guest Editorial Low-Dose CT: What Has Been Done, and What Challenges Remain?
December 2017
Jerome Zhengrong Liang, PhD, led a guest editor team for a special issue on Low-dose Computed Tomography for IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, a top journal in the field where Jerome has been serving for the Editorial Broad since 1999.
To read more about it, please click here.
The full volume of the editorial is published in the 2017 December Issue of the journal.
To read the full volume in the December issues, please click here.
MIRA Lab publishes three Journal papers
November 2017
Dr. Chuan Huang's MIRA Lab published three Journal papers in October and November 2017:
- 'The Bumps Under the Hippocampus' published in Human Brain Maping, October 2017.
- 'Diffusion Entropy: A Potential Neuroimaging Biomarker of Bipolar Disorder in the Temporal Pole'published in Synapse, October 2017.
- 'Breast lesion characterization using whole-lesion histogram analysis with stretched-exponential diffusion model' published in the Journal of Magnetic Resonance Imaging, November 2017.
To learn more about the articles, please click on the titles.
RSNA 2017 Student Travel Award
November 28, 2017
Our Resident, James Bai, MD, was awarded the 2017 RSNA Student Travel Award for his paper titled "Evaluation of Diagnostic Accuracy of Gallium-68 DOTA TATE PET-MRI Hybrid Imaging in Staging and Restaging Neuroendocrine Tumors" Dr. Bai will be presenting it at the RSNA conference on November 28th.
The award is giving by the RSNA Board of Directors to offset a portion of travel expenses for the invesigators in order to ensure that the absolute top quality of imaging science is presented at the conference.
Grand Rounds
October 2, 2017
William T. Thorwarth Jr. MD, FACR, presented Grand Rounds to the faculty and staff in the Department of Radiology. His presentation was titled 'Radiology 2020: Looking Ahead or Back to the Future?'.
Bill Thorwarth MD is the Chief Executive Officer of the American College of Radiology, assuming that role in April 2014.
After receiving his undergraduate and medical degrees from Dartmouth College and Medical School, he trained in internal medicine at Pennsylvania State University. He completed his radiology residency at the University of North Carolina. He practiced interventional and diagnostic radiology as a member of Catawba Radiological Associates for nearly 30 years.
Dr. Thorwarth became actively involved with the American College of Radiology in 1987. His emphasis was Economics and Health Policy, chairing the Committee on Coding and Nomenclature and serving as ACR advisor to the AMA Relative Value System Update Committee (RUC). He was then elected to the ACR Board of Chancellors where he chaired the Commission on Economics for 5 years before assuming the role of ACR President 2003-2004.
NIH Grant Funding
September 2017
Dr. Goldan is awarded an NIH-R21 grant for the feasibility study of picosecond avalanche selenium detectors for time-of-flight (TOF) PET.
The latest integration of PET with MR has greatly advanced the clinical capability in cancer detection, staging, and monitoring of treatment. A time-of-flight (TOF) PET system uses timing information to determine if two registered photons are in “time coincidence” (in which case they belong to the same positron annihilation event), and uses the arrival time difference to localize each annihilation event. The use of TOF information in PET enables (1) simultaneous PET/MR imaging with enhanced resolution (especially for obese patients), (2) improved lesion detectability, and (3) shorter examination time with coregistration. Our hypothesis is that a novel low-cost amorphous selenium (a-Se) detector structure with avalanche multiplication gain and unipolar time differential (UTD) charge sensing can have optimal coincidence timing resolution (CTR) for TOF-PET. The objective of this exploratory R21 proposal is to demonstrate the feasibility of a-Se for TOF-PET by building single pixels on a glass substrate and measuring their CTR.
For more information, please click here.
Diagnostic Imaging Book Translation
September 2017
Our Radiologist Zengmin Yan, MD, participated in the translation of a Diagnostic Imaging book from English to Chinese. Dr. Yan was in charge of translating the Neuroimaging chapter of the book, which happened to be the largest chapter of the book at 150 pages. The book was published in June of 2017 in China.
Proof-of-Concept Award
August 2017
The Center for Biotechnology at Stony Brook University, on behalf of the Long Island Bioscience Hub (LIBH), announced the recipients of the fourth round of funded projects under the Hub’s technology development and commercialization initiative.
Dr. Amir Goldan received his 2nd Proof-of-Concept (POC) award for a total of $200,000 for his project titled “Selenium multi-Well Avalanche Detectors for Medical Imaging Applications.”
To learn more about LIBH grants, please click here.
Grand Rounds
August 11, 2017
Darius Melisaratos, MD, presented Grand Rounds to the faculty and staff in the Department of Radiology. His presentation topic was "MRI Knee Ligament" Dr. Melisaratos' objectives for his presentation were for faculty and staff to learn the MRI Imaging apperance of accute soft tissue MSK injuries, to learn of associated injuries and what to look for and to learn how to describe the clinically relevant information.
Dr. Darius Melisaratos is a Board Certified Radiologist specializing in Neuroradiology. Dr. Melisaratos has a wide variety of experience in MRI, CT and conventional radiology of brain and spine conditions in addition to MRI of musculoskeletal joint and limb conditions. Dr. Melisaratos is an active member in the New York Roentgen Society and the American Society of Neuroradiology. Dr. Melisaratos is especially interested in not only sports and spine conditions, but imaging of brachial plexus and peripheral nerves as well.
Targeted Research Opportunity Program - FUSION Awards
July 2017
The School of Medicine and the Office of the Vice President for Research announce the continuation of a Seed Grant program (FUSION Awards) designed to support highly meritorious and innovative researchfocusing on biomedical discovery, health, and the community. Awardees will utilize these funds to supportinterdisciplinary, basic and applied research, and/or community-based research with the potential toadvance health, add value to clinically-relevant diagnostic and therapeutic technologies, or to facilitatedevelopment of commercially-promising biomedical intellectual property. FUSION Awards are designedto promote collaborations/partnerships among basic science faculty, health care professionals.
Chuan Huang, PhD recieved the 2017/2018 TRO Fusion Award under the Carol M. Baldwin Foundation for Breast Cancer Research. His research is entilted "Development of MRI imaging markers for treatment response early detection and response prediction."
Paul Vaska, PhD (BME/Radiology) & James Paci, MD (Orthopedics) have been awarded a grant from the Stony Brook School of Medicine’s Targeted Research Opportunity Program – FUSION Award, entitled “Neuroimaging in the Hyperacute phase of Sports Concussion”. They will be studying the early effects of concussion on the brain by using advanced PET and MRI neuroimaging with Seawolves athletes.
Nashaat Turkman, PhD (Radiology/Cancer Center) and Joseph Kim, MD (Surgical Oncology) will examine whether our newly developed radiotracer (Dr. Turkman lab) can visualize pancreatic primary tumor and metastases sites and to non-invasively predict and quantify drug response in Pancreatic Cancer using positron emission tomography (PET) imaging. This work won the Stony Brook School of Medicine’s Targeted Research Opportunity Program – FUSION Award Titled: "Molecular Imaging of Class-IIa Histone Deacetylases in Pancreatic Cancer as a Biomarker of Response".
Radiology Resident Graduation
June 26, 2017
The department of Radiology would like to extend a tremendous congratulations to our 2017 Residency class!
Philip Claire, DO
Rajesh Gupta, MD
Uzair Sarmast, MD
Robert Shroyer, MD
Jung Hwoon Yoon, MD
Awards presented
-Rajesh Gupta, MD recieved the RSNA Roentgen Resident Research Award
-Robert Shroyer, MD and Christopher Shackles, MD both recieved the Resident Teaching Award
Stony Brook Biomedical Engineering PhD student named Chateaubriand Fellow
June 13, 2017
Michael Salerno, a third year Biomedical Engineering PhD student, was awarded the 2017-2018 STEM Chateaubriand Fellowship, a grant offered by the Embassy of France in the U.S. to support outstanding PhD students from American universities to conduct research in France for up to nine months. As part of the Chateaubriand Fellowship, Salerno will be supported to go to France for nine months on a joint project: Integrating Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and Functional Ultrasound (fUS) in the behaving rat, to study the relationships between blood flow and neurochemistry during vbehaviors.
To read more about the Fellowship and about Salerno’s research group at Stony Brook, led by Professor of BME and Radiology Paul Vaska, please click here.
Resident of the Quarter
June 2, 2017
I would like to extend the designation to our two chief residents, Dr. Uzair Sarmast and Dr. Robert Shroyer. They have done an absolutely stellar job as chief residents and have set a high bar for future chiefs. They worked together so well that their roles frequently became blurred, as they always adopted a “team” mentality, especially with regard to the betterment of resident education and clinical experiences.
Dr. Shroyer has taken the initiative to bring our resident journal club to an exceptional level by going way above-and-beyond expectation to provide our residents with up-to-date and highly relevant journal articles, started an after-hours clinical physics club, and has given his free time to prepare educational resident conferences and even spend time givingone-on-one reviews. gh bar for future chiefs. They worked together so well that their roles frequently became blurred, as they always adopted a “team” mentality, especially with regard to the betterment of resident education and clinical experiences.
Dr. Sarmast has fielded hundreds of scheduling changes, requests, sick calls, after-hours injection swaps, and call swaps…all while taking care to adhere to ACGME policies and rotational requirements. Despite helping to raise his son, he finds the time to take phone calls in the evenings and early mornings to properly arrange coverage so that when the rest of the department reports to work, the day runs a bit more smoothly because resident coverage has been arranged. I imagine by this point even his wife is sick of looking over and seeing the various colors and rows/columns of the all-too-familiar Qgenda interface on his phone/tablet screen during off hours.
Drs. Shroyer and Sarmast have also fulfilled countless administrative roles, served on several hospital-wide committees, and been an integral part of hospital site visits. They are our primary ambassadors to our residency applicants and they have been respected resources for the feedback and ranking of these applicants.
In short, both of these residents have been an enormous asset to our residents and department, and they are so very deserving of recognition. I know that I speak for the department when I give them a huge thanks for their dedication.
-Kevin Baker, MD
Residency Program Director
ARRS Conference Presentation
May 30, 2017
Our Resident Ezemonye Madu, DO, MPH, present a paper titled 'Utilization of the Lung-RADS S Category Modifier in a Clinical Lung Cancer Screening Program' at the American roentgen Ray Society (ARRS) conference in New Orleans.
Grand Rounds
May 12, 2017
Mauricio Castillo, MD, F.A.C.R., presented Grand Rounds to the faculty and staff in the Department of Radiology. His presentation topic was 'Pituitary Gland: Imaging and Clinical Correlations' Dr. Mauricio Castillo is James H. Scatliff Distinguished Professor of Radiology, Chief and Program Director of Neuroradiology at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. His areas of interest include pediatric neuroimaging, application of new imaging techniques and medical literature editing.
Grand Rounds
May 10, 2017
Anat Biegon, PhD, presented Grand Rounds to the faculty and staff in the Department of Radiology. Her presentation was titled "Neurology in the womb: MR imaging of the fetal brain in utero" Dr. Biegon is a Professor of Neurology for the Stony Brook Neurosciences Institute, and her research interest include:
-Brain response to traumatic, ischemic or inflammatory insults
-Sex differences and gonadal hormone modulation of brain function in health and disease
-Development and validation of radiopharmaceuticals for non invasive imaging of neurotransmitter and hormone markers in the brain
PhD Student invited to give two presentations at the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging meeting
March 31, 2017
Karl Spuhler, MS, a PhD student in Dr. Chuan Huang’s lab, was invited to give two oral presentations in Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging 2017 annual meeting in Denver. Besides these two oral presentations, another poster from Dr. Huang’s lab will also be presented in the meeting.
K. Spuhler, C. Huang, C. DeLorenzo, R. Parsey. Patient-specific transmission volume synthesis for attenuation correction in simultaneous PET/MR. SNMMI 2017
K. Spuhler, C. Huang, M. Ananth, E. Bartlett, J. Ding, X. He, C. DeLorenzo, R. Parsey. Using PET and MRI to assess pretreatment markers of lithium treatment responsiveness in bipolar depression. SNMMI 2017
C. Huang, K. Spuhler, C. DeLorenzo, R. Parsey. A pilot PET/MR study of hippocampal diffusivity and brain metabolism changes following electroconvulsive therapy. SNMMI 2017
Second Year Resident accepted to the AUR Radiology Resident Academic Leadership Development Program
March 23, 2017
Our second year Resident, Matthew Comito, was accepted to the quite competitive (less than 1 in 10 opportunity at acceptance) AUR Radiology Resident Academic Leadership Development Program. The Program, provides focused mentorship, leadership, and academic development activities to a group of high-potential second-year (PGY-3) radiology residents in order to better prepare for their transition into successful careers as leaders in academic radiology. Matthew will be attending the AUR conference and attending numerous seminars for future radiology leaders
Grand Rounds
March 28, 2017
Martin Torriani, MD, presented Grand Rounds to the faculty and staff in the Department of Radiology. He gave two 30-minute presentations, one was research based titled 'Body composition and adipose tissue assessment by imaging techniques' and the other clinical based titled 'Botulinum toxin injections in neurogenic thoracic outlet syndrome and other MSK disorders'.
Dr. Torriani is a musculoskeletal radiologist with 15 plus years of clinical experience in MR imaging and computed tomography. His current focus is the use of advanced imaging methods to study the metabolism of muscle, fat and bone marrow.
PhD student, Adrian Howansky, won first place in the Robert F. Wagner All-Conference Best Student Paper Competition
March 15, 2017
Adrian is a research assistant in the Digital Radiological Imaging Laboratory under the mentorship of Dr. Wei Zhao, a Professor in the Department of Radiology. He received the award for his research paper, entitled “Direct measurement of Lubberts effect in CsI:Tl scintillators using single x-ray photon imaging.” Other coauthors included Dr. Anthony R. Lubinsky, Assistant Professor of Radiology, and collaborators from Hamamatsu Photonics. This work explored fundamental limits to the imaging performance of x-ray detectors used in medical radiography, fluoroscopy, and cone-beam computed tomography.This work was the result of a collaboration with scientists at the National Synchrotron Light Source-II (Brookhaven National Laboratory), in which Adrian served as Lead Experimenter.
(Adrian Howansky, right, receiving award certificate from Dr. Leonard Berliner, Symposium Chair)
43rd Annual Family Medicine Update
March 8-10, 2017
Three of our Radiologist presented at the 43rd Annual Family Medicine Update in March.
Our Radiologist Paul Fisher, MD along with Judy Fingergut, MD, from Family Medicine,
presented on Adnexal Masses under the section of Imaging on March 8, 2017.
Our Radiologist Jennifer Ripton-Snyder, MD along with Louis Verardo, MD, from family medicine, presented on Suspected Child Abuse under the section of Imaging on March 9, 2017.
Our Radiologist Andrew Maleson, MD along with Donna Meltzer, MD, from family medicine, presented on Acute Foot Trauma under the section of Imaging on March 10, 2017.
Resident of the Quarter
February 16, 2017
Following the suggestion of several of our residents here in the department, we have decided to start a “resident of the quarter” initiative where the department can formally recognize one of our residents for exceptionality in any regard. This recognition will result in a letter of commendation in their permanent record as well as a small monetary educational expense bonus. Faculty, techs, nurses, and support staff have and will be periodically polled for nominations.
We would like to extend our congratulations and thanks to our first resident of the quarter, Dr. Christopher Shackles, as his willingness to routinely go way above and beyond the call of duty has caused me to receive dozens of emails from faculty, clinicians, techs, and nurses. Some of these emails are really quite moving, and just this morning I have already received 2 faculty emails for volunteering to handle a patient safety issue prior to the workday even beginning. To quote just one of the many emails that I received several weeks ago:
“Our resident Chris Shackles was on the IR rotation and happened to be nearby when the code was called. He immediately rushed to assist and was heavily involved in the running of the code, even shocking the patient among other things. He directly contributed to saving the patient's life, purely out of a sense of duty and for no other reason.”
I know that I speak for the department as I thank Dr. Shackles for so routinely going above and beyond the call of duty for the betterment of our patients!
-Kevin Baker, MD
Residency Program Director
Grand Rounds: “MACRA, MIPS and APMs, decoding the new alphabet soup of radiology payment and economics”
January 20, 2017
Geraldine McGinty, MD, MBA, FACR, presented Grand Rounds for faculty and staff in the Department of Radiology. Her presentation was titled “MACRA, MIPS and APMs, decoding the new alphabet soup of radiology payment and economics” where she discussed the topics of: Understanding new payment models for radiology, Understanding how radiologists will need to adapt and Understanding the future policy initiatives for radiology payment.
Young Investigator Travel Award' for MSK Fellow Corey Ho, MD
January 13, 2017
Our MSK Fellow Corey Ho, MD, has had his abstract titled 'Temporal Assessment of the Ligamentization Process of Anterior Cruciate Ligament Grafts Utilizing a Novel Ultrashort T2* Sequence (UTE)' Ho C, Gould E, Huang M, He X, Wengler K chosen for the 'Young Investigator Award' on behalf of the Society of Skeletal Radiology Research Committee. The SSR is dedicated to the goal of encouraging and supporting the development of expertise in the subspecialty of musculoskeletal radiology. Dr. Ho will be presented the award during the SSR annual business meeting in Santa Barbara, California on Sunday, March 19, 2017.
