Medical Engineering Distinguished Seminar: Krishna Nayak-USC

Abstract: Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) has had a profound impact on our understanding of health and disease, and on our modern healthcare system. There has been a trend in recent years towards higher static magnetic field strengths (1.5 Tesla, 3 Tesla, 7 Tesla, and beyond), at great cost and complexity. This talk will explain why this benefits some applications but is a detriment to many others! In fact, if one were to design a high-performance MRI from scratch, for cardiac, interventional, lung, contrast agents, hyperpolarized imaging, and a wide array of other applications, a much lower field strength would be preferred. I will specifically make the case for a field strength ~0.5 Tesla, with high performance gradients, and modern console. This does not currently exist on the market but is being developed at USC and NIH/NHLBI. http://sipi.usc.edu; https://mrel.usc.edu/

Biography: Krishna Nayak is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Southern California (USC), with joint appointments in Biomedical Engineering and Radiology. He directs the Signal and Image Processing Institute (http://sipi.usc.edu/) and the Magnetic Resonance Engineering Laboratory (http://mrel.usc.edu/). His portfolio of projects involve the development and translation of novel magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) acquisition, reconstruction, and analysis techniques. Current projects include applications of real-time MRI, cardiac MRI without contrast agents, and application of compressed sensing to clinical MRI. He received his PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 2001, his MS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford in 1996, and BS degrees in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, and Applied Mathematics from Florida State University in 1995. Dr. Nayak has published 100+ journal papers, 250+ conference papers, and has received 10+ US patents.