| Lori Arlinghaus |
| Postdoctoral Research Fellow |
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E-mail Address: lori.arlinghaus@vanderbilt.edu |
| Office Phone: (615) 343-2022 |
Office: MCN AA-1101
Lori received her Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Vanderbilt University in December of 2008. She is interested in the potential of using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) as a noninvasive tool for assessing the efficacy of therapy in breast cancer. Acquiring useful DTIs of the breast at high field strengths is still quite a challenge. Lori's work will focus on improving the quality of DTI of the breast acquired at 3T through improvements in image acquisition, quality control, and image processing.
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| Nellie Byun |
| Postdoctoral Research Fellow |
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| E-mail Address: nellie.byun@vanderbilt.edu
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| Office Phone: (615) 322-0385 |
Office: MCN AA-3101
Nellie uses pharmacologic MRI (phMRI) to assess regional brain responses of psychoactive compounds in rodent models predictive of schizophrenia and their reversal by novel compounds with putative antipsychotic properties. Tying phMRI with behavioral pharmacology strategies, the goal of her research is to elucidate mechanisms underlying schizophrenia, interactions between different neurotransmitter systems, and the functional basis of antipsychotic drugs with different molecular targets and mechanisms.
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| G. Nicole Davis |
| Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Kennedy Center |
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| E-mail Address: nikki.davis@vanderbilt.edu |
| Office Phone: (615) 343-4794 |
Office: MCN AA-3107
Nikki has been working as a postdoctoral fellow at the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center for Research on Human Development since receiving dual PhDs from the Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Science and the Department of Neuroscience at Colorado University, Boulder, in 2006. The majority of her work is an imaging project directed by Dr. John Gore, investigating the structural and functional correlates of math disabilities in third grade children and the response of these neural correlates to intervention. Nikki also works with Drs. Adam Anderson and Donald Compton on a project investigating the neural correlates of responsiveness to reading intervention in young children.
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| Barbara Dillenburger |
| Postdoctoral Research Fellow |
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| E-mail Address: barbara.dillenburger@vanderbilt.edu |
| Office Phone: (615) 343-2530 |
Office: MCN AA-3114
Barbara received both her Ph.D. and masters in Biology from Eberhard
Karls University in Tuebingen/Germany in 2005. Her background is in
visual psychophysics, and single unit electrophysiology in early visual
cortex.
She is interested in sensory processing and perception, and the
potential of using fMRI to study sensory integration noninvasively. She
is currently studying the thalamic and cortical networks underlying
thermal pain processing by means of high field (9.4T) fMRI and single
unit physiology.
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| Richard Dortch |
| Postdoctoral Research Fellow |
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| E-mail Address: richard.dortch@vanderbilt.edu |
| Office Phone: (615) 343-0471 |
Office: MCN AA-1101
Richard Dortch received a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Vanderbilt University in March 2009. His Ph.D. research was focused on compartmental modeling of the NMR signal in excised myelinated tissue samples. Richard began as a postdoctoral research fellow within the VUIIS in April 2009. His current research aims to: 1) develop methods for quantitative MRI (e.g., magnetization transfer, diffusion, multicomponent T2 ) of human spinal cord and optic nerve at 3T and 7T and 2) apply these newly developed methods into clinical patient populations to aid in understanding the nature of diseases that affect specifically the spinal cord and optic nerves.
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| Adrienne Dula |
| Postdoctoral Research Fellow |
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E-mail Address: adrienne.n.dula@vanderbilt.edu |
| Office Phone: (615) 322-6175 |
Office: MCN AA-1101
Adrienne received her PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Vanderbilt in the spring of 2008. As a postdoctoral fellow in the VUIIS, she will take advantage of the high-field 7 Tesla human scanner's capabilities, specifically in applications for implantation of deep brain stimulators for Parkinson's disease patients. She will work with the image processing core at Vanderbilt to create a high-resolution brain atlas, including the deep brain structures such as the subthalamic nucleus which is affected in diseases such as Parkinson's.
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| Chris Elder |
| Postdoctoral Research Fellow |
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E-mail Address: christopher.p.elder@vanderbilt.edu
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| Office Phone: (615) 343-1845 |
Office: VUH B-163
Chris's current research project utilizes the post-exercise changes in
skeletal muscle T2 to model the spatial and temporal sequence of muscle
recruitment in the lower extremity during cycling. The long-term goal is
to create optimized electrical stimulation protocols that improve
functional electrical cycling performance in individuals with spinal cord
injury, thereby enhancing cardiovascular and metabolic adaptations to
exercise in this population. Chris began as a postdoctoral fellow at VUIIS in November
2007, working with Bruce Damon in the Muscle Physiology Laboratory. He earned his PhD in Exercise Physiology from the University of
Georgia with Kevin McCully and the late Gary Dudley.
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| Max Gunther |
| Postdoctoral Research Fellow |
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E-mail Address: max.l.gunther@vanderbilt.edu
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| Office Phone: (615) 886-8720 |
Office: MCN/VUIIS AA-3114
Max is a neuropsychologist who specializes in imaging research aimed at understanding cognitive function and brain pathophysiology of critically ill patients in intensive care units (see www.icudelirium.org for more information). He is also currently involved in investigations that focus on imaging genomics, post-operative cognitive dysfunction (POCD) as well as normal cognitive function in working memory and brain imaging of social-affective processes of marital discord.
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| Marcin Jankiewicz |
| Postdoctoral Research Fellow |
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| E-mail Address:
m.jankiewicz@vanderbilt.edu
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| Office Phone: (615) 343-2530 |
Office: MCN AA-3114
Marcin is involved in projects related to B1 inhomogeneities at ultra high-field MRI. As part of his research, he designs spoke RF-pulses based to correct for RF / B1 inhomogeneities at 7 Tesla.
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| Ha-Kyu Jeong |
| Postdoctoral Research Fellow
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E-mail Address: ha-kyu.jeong@vanderbilt.edu |
| Office Phone: (615) 343-8392 |
Office: MCN AA-3111
Ha-Kyu received an M.S degree in Korea and just completed his PhD at Vanderbilt and VUIIS. His research project is related to improved imaging of brain white matter using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and high angular resolution diffusion imaging (HARDI) in the 3 and 7 Tesla human magnetic resonance imaging environments. For accurate fiber tracking using DTI, the fiber directional uncertainty is characterized and its relevance to diffusion encoding orientation as well as the number of directions have been studied. This study provides an understanding of the coherence between the major/minor axis of fiber directional dispersion and secondary/tertiary eigenvector of a diffusion tensor. For representing multiple fibers within a single voxel, HARDI encoding and spherical deconvolution has been adopted as a Fiber ORientation Estimated using Continuous Axially Symmetric Tensors (FORECAST) model. Reliable estimation of fiber orientation distribution (FOD) function and diffusion properties have been studied with Tikhonov regularization in monkey and/or human data with field inhomogeneity correction, especially in the 7 Tesla MR scanner.
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| Ke Li |
| Postdoctoral Research Fellow |
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| E-mail Address: ke.li@vanderbilt.edu
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| Office Phone: (615)343-7083 |
Office: MCN AA-1109
Ke Li received his Ph.D. Degree in Physics at Vanderbilt University in 2008. He joined in Vanderbilt University Institute of Imaging Science in May 2008 and is currently working with Dr. Gochberg on developing Quantitative Magnetization Transfer Imaging (QMTI) techniques.
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| Xia "Lisa" Li |
| Postdoctoral Research Fellow |
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E-mail Address:
xia.li.1@vanderbilt.edu |
| Office Phone: (615) 322-7915 |
Office: MCN AA-1109
Lisa Li received her M.S. degree in December 2003 and her PhD in Electrical Engineering in December 2007, under the direction of Benoit Dawant. She is currently working as a postdoctoral research fellow in the VUIIS. Her primary research interest involves medical image processing and analysis, especially medical image registration, image segmentation, and pattern recognition.
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| Xiaoyun Liang |
| Postdoctoral Research Fellow |
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E-mail Address: xiaoyun.liang@vanderbilt.edu
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Office: MCN AA-1109
Xiaoyun Liang has been working as a postdoctoral fellow at Vanderbilt University Institute of Imaging Science since 2008. His research interests include medical image analysis, neuroimaging (EEG-fMRI), brain connectivity, visual perception, etc. He is currently focusing on the localization of epileptic activities and alterations of the default mode network in temporal lobe epilepsy patients. |
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| Arabinda Mishra |
| Postdoctoral Research Fellow |
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| E-mail Address:
arabinda.mishra@vanderbilt.edu |
| Office Phone: (615) 322-6213 |
Office: MCN AA-1109
Dr. Mishra earned his MTech and PhD in Instrumentation and Biomedical Image Processing from IIT Kharagpur, India. He worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Hawaii and as an Assistant Professor in IGIT Sarang, India, before coming to Vanderbilt in October 2004. He is currently working on an image-guided diagnosis of atherosclerosis, a coronary geometry study focusing on non-rigid motion analysis of coronary arteries using biplane cine-angiograms and intravascular ultrasound to characterize the shape and motion patterns in order to estimate the degree of sclerosis causing occlusion in blood flow to the cardiac wall. He is also working on an integrated fMRI / DTI study to develop reliable methods for characterizing the structure/function relationship in the human language system. His work focuses on quantitative analysis of the structural connections between functionally active regions in the language circuit of the brain and its relationship with steady state inter-regional correlation between concerned regions.
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| Nilesh Mistry |
| Postdoctoral Research Fellow |
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| E-mail Address:
nilesh.mistry@vanderbilt.edu |
| Office Phone: (615) 322-1957 |
Office: VUH B-163
Nilesh Mistry completed his PhD in Biomedical Engineering at Duke, working under Dr. G. Allan Johnson on small animal MRI. He explored various imaging techniques to perform functional phenotyping for cardiopulmonary systems. He also developed efficient k-space acquisition techniques using under-sampled radial trajectories combined with view-sharing data reconstruction techniques. These techniques improve the spatial and temporal resolution in rats in order to image ventilation using hyperpolarized gases and to image perfusion using dynamic contrast-enhanced MR imaging. Nilesh received his Masters in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, working on clinical cardiac image processing.
Nilesh is currently working on cancer imaging using BOLD-MRI to look at angiogenesis and hypoxia. He is also developing 17O-MRI capabilities to look at blood flow and metabolic oxygen utilization rate in small animals, with the eventual goal of moving it to the clinical systems. His interests also include image registration, non-rigid deformation models, morphometry, and diffusion tensor imaging.
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| Michael Nickels |
| Postdoctoral Research Fellow |
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| E-mail Address: michael.l.nickels@vanderbilt.edu
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| Office Phone: (615) 343-5484 |
Office: VUH B-163
Michael earned his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) under the direction of Professor John Katzenellenbogen in 2007. His graduate research focused on the development of various radiolabeled ligands for the estrogen receptor. Upon completion of the Ph.D. program at UIUC, Michael went through a one-year post-doctoral appointment at a small contract synthesis company. Where he did classic drug discovery chemistry focusing on a new class of osteoporosis drugs, one of which is now in phase 1 clinical trials. In addition to drug discovery, a large amount of time was spent doing process chemistry and scale-up work. Michael joined the VUIIS in September of 2008 and focuses on the design, synthesis, and evaluation of radiopharmaceuticals in addition to stable isotope MRI contrast agents. |
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| Swati Rane |
| Postdoctoral Research Fellow |
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| E-mail Address: swati.rane@vanderbilt.edu
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| Office Phone: (615) 343-4796 |
Office: MCN, AA3107
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| Indrajit Saha |
| Postdoctoral Research Fellow |
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| E-mail Address: indrajit.saha@vanderbilt.edu
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| Office Phone: (615) 343-0897 |
Office: VUH B-163
Indrajit earned his M.Sc. in Chemistry from the University of Kalyani, India and received his Ph.D. in Chemistry in 2008 with Dr. Boyd M. Goodson at Southern Illinois University. His Ph.D. research was focused on developing new techniques to enhance the sensitivity of NMR spectroscopy by using hyperpolarized xenon and NMR studies of magnetically inhomogeneous media including iron-oxide-based MRI contrast agents and diffusion-mediated effects on their properties, along with the investigation of the effects of asphaltenes on the MR properties of crude oil. Indrajit joined VUIIS in June 2008 and is currently working with Drs. James Joers and John Gore towards developing multiple MRS techniques on 3T and 7T human scanners for in vivo quantifications of the major neurotransmitters in different parts of deep brain structure to understand the effects of metabolites on different psychiatric conditions.
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| Sepideh Shokouhi |
| Postdoctoral Research Fellow |
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| E-mail Address:sepideh.shokouhi@vanderbilt.edu |
| Office Phone: (615) 322-6214 |
Office: MCN AA-3101
Dr. Shokouhi's research interest is developing new nuclear imaging modalities (PET, SPECT) and statistical parameter estimations for task-specific applications.
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| Tricia Thornton-Wells |
| Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Kennedy Center |
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| E-mail Address:
t.thornton-wells@vanderbilt.edu
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| Office Phone: (615) 322-7146 |
Office: 207 MRL/Kennedy Center
Tricia Thornton-Wells has done work in bioinformatics, biostatistics, statistical genetics, and genetic epidemiology, with a focus on computational methodologies for detecting heterogeneity and gene-gene and gene-environment interactions. Her current postdoctoral training involves designing and analyzing neuroimaging studies of neurodevelopmental disorders. Tricia is investigating genotype-phenotype relationships in neurological disorders, particularly cognitive and affective disorders, including neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders. By identifying neural correlates and genetic risk factors behind particular sub- or endo-phenotypes, we can increase our knowledge of normal and abnormal processes and perhaps identify targets for therapeutic (behavioral, pharmacological, and/or genetic) treatments.
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| Jack Virostko |
| Postdoctoral Research Fellow |
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E-mail Address:
jack.virostko@vanderbilt.edu
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| Office Phone: (615) 322-9570 |
Office: MCN AA-3101
Jack began as a postdoctoral fellow with VUIIS in January 2007. Prior to that he received a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering at Vanderbilt. His graduate work focused on imaging the pancreatic islet, with emphasis on bioluminescence imaging. Jack's research interests are multi-modal molecular imaging using optical and MRI techniques. He is developing cell labeling techniques and targeted contrast agents for in vivo application.
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| Jingping Xie |
| Postdoctoral Research Fellow |
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| E-mail Address: jingping.xie@vanderbilt.edu |
| Office Phone: (615) 936-7083 |
Office: MCN AA-3114
Jingping Xie's current research project is to develop specific high-affinity molecules (mainly DNA aptamers) targeted to phenotypic difference between two biological entities with known physiologic significance. Major focus is placed on selecting binding molecules which can recognize and access various specific tumor cells and their subsequent applications in molecular cancer imaging.
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| Junzhong Xu |
| Postdoctoral Research Fellow |
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E-mail Address: junzhong.xu@vanderbilt.edu |
| Office Phone: (615) 343-8392 |
Office: MCN AA-3111
Junzhong Xu studies the simulation of diffusion in tissues. He has been a member of VUIIS
since April 2004. He received his Bachelor of Science in Optics (1999) and Master
of Science in Optics (2002), both from the University of Science and Technology
of China. He recently received his PhD from Vanderbilt University.
Personal web page. |
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| Zhongliang Zu |
| Postdoctoral Research Fellow |
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E-mail Address: zhongliangzu@gmail.com
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| Office Phone: (615) 322-0294 |
Office: VUH B-165
Dr. Zu’s primary area of research involves developing novel Chemical Exchange Saturation Transfer (CEST) imaging technique. The goal of his research is to reduce the imaging time and increase the spatial resolution in CEST imaging. He has been a member of the VUIIS since September 2008. He completed a ph.D. in physics from Peking University, China. His graduate work consisted fast quantitative MRI technique using Steady State Free Procession (SSFP) sequence. |
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Post-Doctoral Fellows |
Graduate Students |
Alumni 