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This is the first time the Lauterbur Award has recognized fundamental research performed by a faculty member at a children's hospital.
The award is presented annually for the best original research in MRI. The highly-regarded award recognizes Dr. Vasanawala’s work for exploring a novel MRI method that is faster and permits higher resolution imaging with less motion-related blurring. This is highly relevant for kids, as it holds tremendous promise for performing MRI either without, or with substantially reduced, sedation or anesthesia. The Society honored Vasanawala on March 3 in Miami for his scientific paper outlining the research, “Faster Pediatric MRI with Compressed Sensing.” His collaborators included Marcus Alley, PhD; Gary E. Gold, MD; Robert J. Herfkens, MD; John Pauly, PhD; and Michael Lustig, PhD.
“Dr.Vasanawala's research promises to accelerate MRI examinations in children and thereby minimize dependence on general anesthesia for pediatric MRI studies,” said Richard Barth, MD, Chief of Pediatric Radiology at Packard Children’s. “His work sets the table for transforming MRI into a common pediatric imaging procedure replacing many CT studies and reducing the radiation burden on children.”
Vasanawala joined the Department of Radiology faculty in July of 2007, after receiving his degree and a PhD in biophysics from Stanford, followed by residency training in radiology at Stanford and a pediatric radiology fellowship at Packard Children's. During his fellowship, Dr. Vasanawala received specialty training in pediatric musculoskeletal imaging at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and in pediatric cardiovascular imaging at Sick Kids in Toronto. Vasanawala's research aims to improve magnetic resonance imaging techniques for evaluating pediatric diseases.
The Lauterbur Award in Magnetic Resonance is named in honor of Paul Lauterbur, PhD, who first described the basic MRI technique in 1972 and published his first MR image in 1973.
For information about all three, please visit http://stanfordmedicine.org/about/news.html.
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