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Brad Sutton to present MRRF seminar on Tuesday, April 20, 2021

MRI has been widely used to examine structure and function in the brain using a variety of imaging contrasts based on water content of tissues, signal relaxation differences, and blood oxygenation. For research applications, these images can show how the brain changes during age and disease in conjunction with changes in brain functional performance. However, these standard MR imaging approaches have very little, if any, sensitivity to detect differences in the brain associated with differences in performance in healthy young adults. Recently, we have developed technologies that enable the precise measurement of the mechanical properties of the brain, non-invasively, with a technique called magnetic resonance elastography (MRE). With MRE, we have seen a high sensitivity between brain performance and mechanical properties, in clinical populations and even in healthy young adults. I will describe the enabling technologies, our early applications, and some of the interesting findings of this highly interdisciplinary project.

Brad Sutton received his PhD in Bioengineering from the University of Michigan in 2003, along with M.S.’s in Biomedical and Electrical Engineering; after earning his BS in General Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He joined the Bioengineering Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2006. He has affiliations with the Beckman Institute, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, and the Neuroscience Program. He is currently a Professor of Bioengineering and the Technical Director of the Biomedical Imaging Center at Beckman Institute. His research interests are in developing magnetic resonance imaging acquisition, image reconstruction, and systems modeling approaches to understand brain function and motor control. He has >140 peer reviewed journal publications, over 100 conference papers, and six patents in the area of image acquisition with MRI.  

 

Date: 
Friday, March 26, 2021