Research Summary

I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging at UCSF focused on developing MRI methods that provide novel information about tissue structure and function that are not accessible by other clinical imaging modalities. My background is primarily in MR pulse sequence development, including MR physics, RF pulse design, acquisition strategies, and reconstruction techniques, beginning in 2003 under the advising of Profs. Dwight Nishimura and John Pauly at Stanford University. I came to UCSF as a post-doc in 2007 under Prof. Daniel Vigneron and joined the faculty in 2011.

A major focus of my research program is hyperpolarized carbon-13 metabolic magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) methods, and I am part of the team at UCSF translating this modality into human studies of cancer. The technology has the potential to improve staging of cancer and monitoring treatment response by measuring real-time conversion in key metabolic pathways. I develop the MRI data acquisition and image reconstruction methodologies for these studies.

Research Funding

  • July 1, 2021 - June 30, 2026 - Hyperpolarized C-13 MRI Techniques to Monitor Radiation Therapy Response in Prostate Cancer Patients , Co-Investigator . Sponsor: NIH, Sponsor Award ID: R01CA238379
  • April 1, 2021 - March 31, 2026 - Ultra-Fast Knee MRI with Deep Learning , Co-Investigator . Sponsor: NIH, Sponsor Award ID: R01AR078762
  • January 1, 2021 - December 31, 2025 - Translating Hyperpolarized 13C Metabolic MRI to Predict Renal Tumor Aggressiveness , Co-Principal Investigator . Sponsor: NIH, Sponsor Award ID: R01CA249909
  • December 1, 2020 - November 30, 2025 - Measuring Metabolic Activity in Prostate Cancer Bone Metastases Using Hyperpolarized 13C Pyruvate MRI for Improved Targeted Therapy Monitoring , Co-Investigator . Sponsor: NIH, Sponsor Award ID: R01CA256740

Education

Stanford University, Stanford, CA, B.S., 06/02, Electrical Engineering and Mathematics
Stanford University, Stanford, CA, M.S., 06/03, Electrical Engineering
Stanford University, Stanford, CA, Ph.D., 09/07, Electrical Engineering
University of California – San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, Postdoctoral, 09/07-08/11, Radiology and Biomedical Imaging

Honors & Awards

  • 1998
    IEEE Wescon Scholarship - 2nd Place
  • 1998
    RC Byrd Honors Scholarship
  • 2003
    National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship - Honorable Mention
  • 2005
    International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine Annual Meeting Poster Award – 2nd place, Pulse sequences category
  • 2006
    Myelin Imaging Conference Poster Award – Accompanied by proffered talk
  • 2009
    Surbeck Scholar Award – 2nd place
  • 2009
    Outstanding Poster Award – UCSF Dept. of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging Research Symposium
  • 2010
    Surbeck Scholar Award – 1st place
  • 2011
    Surbeck Scholar Award – 1st place
  • 2011
    International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (ISMRM) Junior Fellow
  • 2010,2011,2012
    Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (MRM) Distinguished Reviewer

Selected Publications

  1. Scholey JE, Rajagopal A, Vasquez EG, Sudhyadhom A, Larson PEZ. Generation of synthetic megavoltage CT for MRI-only radiotherapy treatment planning using a 3D deep convolutional neural network. Med Phys. 2022 Jul 23.  View on PubMed
  2. Hu JY, Kim Y, Autry AW, Frost MM, Bok RA, Villanueva-Meyer JE, Xu D, Li Y, Larson PEZ, Vigneron DB, Gordon JW. Kinetic analysis of multi-resolution hyperpolarized 13 C human brain MRI to study cerebral metabolism. Magn Reson Med. 2022 11; 88(5):2190-2197.  View on PubMed
  3. Liu X, Tang S, Mu C, Qin H, Cui D, Lai YC, Riselli AM, Delos Santos R, Carvajal L, Gebrezgiabhier D, Bok RA, Chen HY, Flavell RR, Gordon JW, Vigneron DB, Kurhanewicz J, Larson PEZ. Development of specialized magnetic resonance acquisition techniques for human hyperpolarized [13 C,15 N2 ]urea + [1-13 C]pyruvate simultaneous perfusion and metabolic imaging. Magn Reson Med. 2022 09; 88(3):1039-1054.  View on PubMed
  4. Scholey J, Vinas L, Kearney V, Yom S, Larson PEZ, Descovich M, Sudhyadhom A. Improved accuracy of relative electron density and proton stopping power ratio through CycleGAN machine learning. Phys Med Biol. 2022 05 02; 67(10).  View on PubMed
  5. Lee PM, Chen HY, Gordon JW, Wang ZJ, Bok R, Hashoian R, Kim Y, Liu X, Nickles T, Cheung K, Alas FL, Daniel H, Larson PEZ, von Morze C, Vigneron DB, Ohliger MA. Whole-Abdomen Metabolic Imaging of Healthy Volunteers Using Hyperpolarized [1-13 C]pyruvate MRI. J Magn Reson Imaging. 2022 Dec; 56(6):1792-1806.  View on PubMed
  6. Bøgh N, Gordon JW, Hansen ESS, Bok RA, Blicher JU, Hu JY, Larson PEZ, Vigneron DB, Laustsen C. Initial Experience on Hyperpolarized [1-13C]Pyruvate MRI Multicenter Reproducibility-Are Multicenter Trials Feasible? Tomography. 2022 03 01; 8(2):585-595.  View on PubMed
  7. Velarde N, Westphalen AC, Nguyen HG, Neuhaus J, Shinohara K, Simko JP, Larson PE, Magudia K. US lesion visibility predicts clinically significant upgrade of prostate cancer by systematic biopsy. Abdom Radiol (NY). 2022 03; 47(3):1133-1141.  View on PubMed
  8. Hong D, Batsios G, Viswanath P, Gillespie AM, Vaidya M, Larson PEZ, Ronen SM. Acquisition and quantification pipeline for in vivo hyperpolarized 13 C MR spectroscopy. Magn Reson Med. 2022 04; 87(4):1673-1687.  View on PubMed
  9. de Kouchkovsky I, Chen HY, Ohliger MA, Wang ZJ, Bok RA, Gordon JW, Larson PEZ, Frost M, Okamoto K, Cooperberg MR, Kurhanewicz J, Vigneron DB, Aggarwal R. Hyperpolarized 1-[13C]-Pyruvate Magnetic Resonance Imaging Detects an Early Metabolic Response to Immune Checkpoint Inhibitor Therapy in Prostate Cancer. Eur Urol. 2022 02; 81(2):219-221.  View on PubMed
  10. Laforest R, Khalighi M, Natsuaki Y, Rajagopal A, Chandramohan D, Byrd D, An H, Larson P, James SS, Sunderland JJ, Kinahan PE, Hope TA. Harmonization of PET image reconstruction parameters in simultaneous PET/MRI. EJNMMI Phys. 2021 Nov 05; 8(1):75.  View on PubMed
  11. Hamdi M, Natsuaki Y, Wangerin KA, An H, St James S, Kinahan PE, Sunderland JJ, Larson PEZ, Hope TA, Laforest R. Evaluation of attenuation correction in PET/MRI with synthetic lesion insertion. J Med Imaging (Bellingham). 2021 Sep; 8(5):056001.  View on PubMed
  12. Viswanath P, Batsios G, Ayyappan V, Taglang C, Gillespie AM, Larson PEZ, Luchman HA, Costello JF, Pieper RO, Ronen SM. Metabolic imaging detects elevated glucose flux through the pentose phosphate pathway associated with TERT expression in low-grade gliomas. Neuro Oncol. 2021 09 01; 23(9):1509-1522.  View on PubMed
  13. Qin H, Tang S, Riselli AM, Bok RA, Delos Santos R, van Criekinge M, Gordon JW, Aggarwal R, Chen R, Goddard G, Zhang CT, Chen A, Reed G, Ruscitto DM, Slater J, Sriram R, Larson PEZ, Vigneron DB, Kurhanewicz J. Clinical translation of hyperpolarized 13 C pyruvate and urea MRI for simultaneous metabolic and perfusion imaging. Magn Reson Med. 2022 01; 87(1):138-149.  View on PubMed
  14. Trudel G, Duchesne-Bélanger S, Thomas J, Melkus G, Cron GO, Larson PEZ, Schweitzer M, Sheikh A, Louati H, Laneuville O. Quantitative analysis of repaired rabbit supraspinatus tendons (± channeling) using magnetic resonance imaging at 7 Tesla. Quant Imaging Med Surg. 2021 Aug; 11(8):3460-3471.  View on PubMed
  15. Catana C, Laforest R, An H, Boada F, Cao T, Faul D, Jakoby B, Jansen FP, Kemp BJ, Kinahan PE, Larson P, Levine MA, Maniawski P, Mawlawi O, McConathy JE, McMillan AB, Price JC, Rajagopal A, Sunderland J, Veit-Haibach P, Wangerin KA, Ying C, Hope TA. A Path to Qualification of PET/MRI Scanners for Multicenter Brain Imaging Studies: Evaluation of MRI-Based Attenuation Correction Methods Using a Patient Phantom. J Nucl Med. 2022 04; 63(4):615-621.  View on PubMed
  16. Lee PM, Chen HY, Gordon JW, Zhu Z, Larson PEZ, Dwork N, Van Criekinge M, Carvajal L, Ohliger MA, Wang ZJ, Xu D, Kurhanewicz J, Bok RA, Aggarwal R, Munster PN, Vigneron DB. Specialized computational methods for denoising, B1 correction, and kinetic modeling in hyperpolarized 13 C MR EPSI studies of liver tumors. Magn Reson Med. 2021 11; 86(5):2402-2411.  View on PubMed
  17. Kim Y, Chen HY, Autry AW, Villanueva-Meyer J, Chang SM, Li Y, Larson PEZ, Brender JR, Krishna MC, Xu D, Vigneron DB, Gordon JW. Denoising of hyperpolarized 13 C MR images of the human brain using patch-based higher-order singular value decomposition. Magn Reson Med. 2021 11; 86(5):2497-2511.  View on PubMed
  18. Larson PEZ, Gordon JW. Hyperpolarized Metabolic MRI-Acquisition, Reconstruction, and Analysis Methods. Metabolites. 2021 Jun 14; 11(6).  View on PubMed
  19. Batsios G, Taglang C, Cao P, Gillespie AM, Najac C, Subramani E, Wilson DM, Flavell RR, Larson PEZ, Ronen SM, Viswanath P. Imaging 6-Phosphogluconolactonase Activity in Brain Tumors In Vivo Using Hyperpolarized δ-[1-13C]gluconolactone. Front Oncol. 2021; 11:589570.  View on PubMed
  20. Tang S, Meng MV, Slater JB, Gordon JW, Vigneron DB, Stohr BA, Larson PEZ, Wang ZJ. Metabolic imaging with hyperpolarized 13 C pyruvate magnetic resonance imaging in patients with renal tumors-Initial experience. Cancer. 2021 08 01; 127(15):2693-2704.  View on PubMed

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