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, 2018 - June 30, 2022 - Imaging Metabolism and Cellular Transport in Cancer, Principal Investigator. Sponsor: American Cancer Society, Sponsor Award ID: 131715-RSG-18-005-01-CCE
  • April 15, 2018 - March 31, 2022 - MRI methods for high resolution imaging of the lung, Principal Investigator. Sponsor: NIH/NHLBI, Sponsor Award ID: R01HL136965
  • September 17, 2014 - May 31, 2018 - Hyperpolarized C-13 Diffusion MRI Measures of Cellular Transport and Metabolism, Principal Investigator. Sponsor: NIH/NIBIB, Sponsor Award ID: R01EB016741
  • April 1, 2016 - March 31, 2018 - Novel Ultrashort Echo Time Sequences for Brain MRI, Principal Investigator. Sponsor: NIH/NINDS, Sponsor Award ID: R21NS089004

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. 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 Jan 07.  View on PubMed
  2. 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. 2021 Nov 14.  View on PubMed
  3. 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. 2021 Nov 07.  View on PubMed
  4. 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
  5. 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
  6. 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
  7. 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. 2021 Aug 10.  View on PubMed
  8. Guy Trudel, Samuel Duchesne-Bélanger, Justin Thomas, Gerd Melkus, Greg O. Cron, Peder E. Z. Larson, Mark Schweitzer, Adnan Sheikh, Hakim Louati, Odette Laneuville. Quantitative analysis of repaired rabbit supraspinatus tendons (± channeling) using magnetic resonance imaging at 7 Tesla. Quantitative Imaging in Medicine and Surgery. 2021 Aug 1; 11(8):3460-3471.  View on PubMed
  9. 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
  10. Catana C, Laforest R, An H, Boada F, Cao T, Faul D, Jakoby B, Jansen FP, Kemp BJ, Kinahan PE, Larson PEZ, Levine MA, Maniawski P, Mawlawi O, McConathy J, McMillan A, Price JC, Rajagopal A, Sunderland J, Veit-Haibach P, Wangerin KA, Ying C, Hope TA. A Path to Qualification of PET/MR Scanners for Multicenter Brain Imaging Studies: Evaluation of MR-based Attenuation Correction Methods Using a Patient Phantom. J Nucl Med. 2021 Jul 22.  View on PubMed
  11. 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 Jul 03.  View on PubMed
  12. 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 Jun 25.  View on PubMed
  13. Larson PEZ, Gordon JW. Hyperpolarized Metabolic MRI-Acquisition, Reconstruction, and Analysis Methods. Metabolites. 2021 Jun 14; 11(6).  View on PubMed
  14. Peder Eric Zufall Larson, Jeremy W. Gordon. Hyperpolarized Metabolic MRI—Acquisition, Reconstruction, and Analysis Methods. Metabolites. 2021 Jun 14; 11(6):386.  View on PubMed
  15. 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
  16. 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 Aug 01; 127(15):2693-2704.  View on PubMed
  17. Zhu X, Tan F, Johnson K, Larson P. Optimizing trajectory ordering for fast radial ultra-short TE (UTE) acquisitions. J Magn Reson. 2021 06; 327:106977.  View on PubMed
  18. Xucheng Zhu, Fei Tan, Kevin Johnson, Peder Larson. Optimizing Trajectory Ordering for Fast Radial ultra-short TE (UTE) Acquisitions. Journal of Magnetic Resonance. 2021 Apr 1; 106977.  View on PubMed
  19. Georgios Batsios, Pavithra Viswanath, Celine Taglang, Robert Flavell, Joseph Costello, Russell O Pieper, Peder Larson, Sabrina Ronen. TBMT-01. HYPERPOLARIZED d-[1-13C]GLUCONOLACTONE MONITORS TERT-INDUCED ELEVATION IN PENTOSE PHOSPHATE PATHWAY FLUX IN BRAIN TUMORS IN VIVO. Neuro-Oncology Advances. 2021 Mar 25; 3(Supplement_1):i20-i20.  View on PubMed
  20. Dwork N, O'Connor D, Baron CA, Johnson EMI, Kerr AB, Pauly JM, Larson PEZ. Utilizing the Wavelet Transform's Structure in Compressed Sensing. Signal Image Video Process. 2021 Oct; 15(7):1407-1414.  View on PubMed

Go to UCSF Profiles, powered by CTSI