PhD student Rie Beck Hansen recently returned from an eight month external research mission at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), where she worked with Professor Daniel B. Vigneron’s group in Hyperpolarized Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) Technology Resource Center.
Rie’s rewarding collaboration with Vigneron Lab researchers has resulted in several conference abstracts with UCSF co-authors. A joint article on 3D hyperpolarized C-13 EPI with calibrationless parallel imaging has just been published in Journal of Magnetic Resonance (vol. 289), and another paper is on the way.
Hyperpolarization by dissolution Dynamic Nuclear Polarization provides a 10,000+ fold enhancement of the MR signal. This enables a unique non-invasive, real-time metabolic imaging of biochemical fingerprints, e.g. in tumor tissue. With Hyperpolarized Metabolic MR, doctors can make more accurate diagnoses and patient specific treatment plans.
However, the novel imaging method places high demands on the signal acquisition. Existing methods are not fast enough to collect the necessary data.
"The extended stay has given me sparring and hands-on experiences that I could not get in Denmark, not least in relation to the patient studies. It is all valuable knowledge for my work in upcoming patient studies at Skejby Hospital, which has just received the approval from Danish Medicines Agency for a study on patients with pancreatic cancer."
Rie Beck Hansen, Phd student
Rie’s PhD project focuses on parallel imaging, a powerful method that uses multi-channel coils to achieve reduced scan times. Her overall aim is to implement parallel imaging sequences and reconstruction as a means to accelerate data collection and thus provide a feasible foundation for Hyperpolarized Metabolic MRI in clinical applications.
Vigneron’s Lab is a world-leading center in the field of clinical hyperpolarized MR research. UCSF is authorized to conduct clinical studies using hyperpolarized MR, which has provided Rie with unique opportunities for testing her research directly on patients.
At UCSF Rie was involved in the further development of the parallel imaging method SAKE. The article published in Journal of Magnetic Resonance shows the team’s work on testing the developed method as a means to accelerate hyperpolarized MR data and demonstrating its application in a human study involving abdominal imaging of a healthy volunteer.
Rie’s PhD project is funded by Independent Research Fund Denmark and part of the HYPERMAG Center of Excellence effort. Her extended stay at UCSF was made possible through generous travel grants from EliteForsk (Elite Research Initiative Denmark) and Reinholdt W Jorck og hustrus Fond.