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
  • September 7, 2020 - August 31, 2025 - Co-Clinical Quantitative Imaging of Small Cell Neuroendocrine Prostate Cancer Using Hyperpolarized 13C MRI , Co-Investigator . Sponsor: NIH, Sponsor Award ID: U24CA253377
  • September 1, 2010 - August 31, 2025 - Training Program in Translational Brain Tumor Research , Co-Investigator . Sponsor: NIH, Sponsor Award ID: T32CA151022
  • August 1, 2021 - July 31, 2024 - UTE MRI: a Novel Biomarker for Remyelination in Multiple Sclerosis Patients , Principal Investigator . Sponsor: DOD, Sponsor Award ID: MS200272
  • August 16, 2019 - June 30, 2024 - Development of Sodium Fluoride PET-MRI for Quantitative Assessment of Knee Osteoarthritis , Co-Investigator . Sponsor: NIH, Sponsor Award ID: R01AR074492
  • April 11, 2019 - March 31, 2024 - Hyperpolarized C-13 MRI for Early Detection of Aggressive Prostate Cancer in Active Surveillance Patients , Co-Investigator . Sponsor: NIH, Sponsor Award ID: U01CA232320
  • June 1, 2019 - February 29, 2024 - Development and Translation of Hyperpolarized C-13 Prostate Cancer MRI Methods , Co-Investigator . Sponsor: NIH, Sponsor Award ID: U01EB026412
  • July 12, 2021 - April 30, 2023 - Hyperpolarized 13C Metabolic MRI for Noninvasive Monitoring of Kidney Injury , Principal Investigator . Sponsor: NIH, Sponsor Award ID: R21DK130002
  • March 6, 2017 - February 28, 2023 - Qualification and Harmonization of PET/MRI for Cancer Clinical Trials , Co-Investigator . Sponsor: NIH, Sponsor Award ID: R01CA212148
  • December 1, 2020 - November 30, 2022 - Multi-modal and Extreme PET/MRI Reconstruction Methods , Co-Investigator . Sponsor: NIH, Sponsor Award ID: F32EB030411
  • 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, Sponsor Award ID: R01HL136965
  • March 6, 2017 - February 28, 2022 - CLINICAL TRANSLATION OF HYPERPOLARIZED 13C-UREA FOR CANCER MR MOLECULAR IMAGING , Co-Investigator . Sponsor: NIH, Sponsor Award ID: R01CA214554
  • March 1, 2017 - February 28, 2022 - Multi-Site Development & Evaluation of a Quantitative 3D Hyperpolarized C-13 MRI Clinical Prostate Cancer Exam , Co-Investigator . Sponsor: NIH, Sponsor Award ID: R01CA211150
  • January 1, 2020 - December 31, 2021 - Comprehensive Assessment of Cardiac Anatomy and Function with Magnetic Resonance Imaging , Mentor . Sponsor: American Heart Association Postdoctoral Fellowship, Sponsor Award ID:
  • July 1, 2019 - June 30, 2021 - Prediction of Clinically Significant Prostate Cancer from Only T2 Weighted Imaging Using Machine Learning , Co-investigator . Sponsor: RSNA Research Resident/Fellow Grant, Sponsor Award ID:
  • July 1, 2011 - May 31, 2021 - Hyperpolarized MRI Technology Resource Center , Co-Investigator . Sponsor: NIH, Sponsor Award ID: P41EB013598
  • April 1, 2016 - March 31, 2021 - Metabolic Imaging of Brain Tumor Response to Therapy , Co-Investigator . Sponsor: NIH, Sponsor Award ID: R01CA197254
  • April 1, 2019 - March 30, 2021 - Prediction of clinically significant prostate cancer and prostate-cancer related outcomes from only T2 weighted imaging using machine learning , Co-investigator . Sponsor: Society for Abdominal Radiology, Sponsor Award ID:

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. Larson PE, Bernard JM, Bankson JA, Bøgh N, Bok RA, Chen AP, Cunningham CH, Gordon J, Hövener JB, Laustsen C, Mayer D, McLean MA, Schilling F, Slater J, Vanderheyden JL, von Morze C, Vigneron DB, Xu D, Group THCMC. Current Methods for Hyperpolarized [1-13C]pyruvate MRI Human Studies. ArXiv. 2023 Sep 07.  View on PubMed
  2. Hu JY, Vaziri S, Bøgh N, Kim Y, Autry AW, Bok RA, Li Y, Laustsen C, Xu D, Larson PEZ, Chang S, Vigneron DB, Gordon JW. Investigating cerebral perfusion with high resolution hyperpolarized [1-13 C]pyruvate MRI. Magn Reson Med. 2023 Sep 04.  View on PubMed
  3. Chung BT, Kim Y, Gordon JW, Chen HY, Autry AW, Lee PM, Hu JY, Tan CT, Suszczynski C, Chang SM, Villanueva-Meyer JE, Bok RA, Larson PEZ, Xu D, Li Y, Vigneron DB. Hyperpolarized [2-13C]pyruvate MR molecular imaging with whole brain coverage. Neuroimage. 2023 10 15; 280:120350.  View on PubMed
  4. Liu H, Autry AW, Larson PEZ, Xu D, Li Y. Atlas-Based Adaptive Hadamard-Encoded MR Spectroscopic Imaging at 3T. Tomography. 2023 Aug 23; 9(5):1592-1602.  View on PubMed
  5. Autry AW, Vaziri S, LaFontaine M, Gordon JW, Chen HY, Kim Y, Villanueva-Meyer JE, Molinaro A, Clarke JL, Oberheim Bush NA, Xu D, Lupo JM, Larson PEZ, Vigneron DB, Chang SM, Li Y. Multi-parametric hyperpolarized 13C/1H imaging reveals Warburg-related metabolic dysfunction and associated regional heterogeneity in high-grade human gliomas. Neuroimage Clin. 2023 Aug 18; 39:103501.  View on PubMed
  6. Liu X, Tang S, Cui D, Bok RA, Chen HY, Gordon JW, Wang ZJ, Larson PEZ. A metabolite specific 3D stack-of-spirals bSSFP sequence for improved bicarbonate imaging in hyperpolarized [1-13C]Pyruvate MRI. J Magn Reson. 2023 08; 353:107518.  View on PubMed
  7. Jakary A, Lupo JM, Mackin S, Yin A, Murray D, Yang T, Mukherjee P, Larson P, Xu D, Eisendrath S, Luks T, Li Y. Evaluation of major depressive disorder using 7 Tesla phase sensitive neuroimaging before and after mindfulness-based cognitive therapy. J Affect Disord. 2023 08 15; 335:383-391.  View on PubMed
  8. Moore SM, Quirk JD, Lassiter AW, Laforest R, Ayers GD, Badea CT, Fedorov AY, Kinahan PE, Holbrook M, Larson PEZ, Sriram R, Chenevert TL, Malyarenko D, Kurhanewicz J, Houghton AM, Ross BD, Pickup S, Gee JC, Zhou R, Gammon ST, Manning HC, Roudi R, Daldrup-Link HE, Lewis MT, Rubin DL, Yankeelov TE, Shoghi KI. Co-Clinical Imaging Metadata Information (CIMI) for Cancer Research to Promote Open Science, Standardization, and Reproducibility in Preclinical Imaging. Tomography. 2023 05 11; 9(3):995-1009.  View on PubMed
  9. Tan F, Zhu X, Chan M, Zapala MA, Vasanawala SS, Ong F, Lustig M, Larson PEZ. Motion-compensated low-rank reconstruction for simultaneous structural and functional UTE lung MRI. Magn Reson Med. 2023 09; 90(3):1101-1113.  View on PubMed
  10. Gammon ST, Cohen AS, Lehnert AL, Sullivan DC, Malyarenko D, Manning HC, Hormuth DA, Daldrup-Link HE, An H, Quirk JD, Shoghi K, Pagel MD, Kinahan PE, Miyaoka RS, Houghton AM, Lewis MT, Larson P, Sriram R, Blocker SJ, Pickup S, Badea A, Badea CT, Yankeelov TE, Chenevert TL. An Online Repository for Pre-Clinical Imaging Protocols (PIPs). Tomography. 2023 03 27; 9(2):750-758.  View on PubMed
  11. Sahin SI, Ji X, Agarwal S, Sinha A, Mali I, Gordon JW, Mattingly M, Subramaniam S, Kurhanewicz J, Larson PEZ, Sriram R. Metabolite-Specific Echo Planar Imaging for Preclinical Studies with Hyperpolarized 13C-Pyruvate MRI. Tomography. 2023 03 27; 9(2):736-749.  View on PubMed
  12. Dwork N, O'Connor D, Johnson EMI, Baron CA, Gordon JW, Pauly JM, Larson PEZ. Optimization in the space domain for density compensation with the nonuniform FFT. Magn Reson Imaging. 2023 07; 100:102-111.  View on PubMed
  13. Deveshwar N, Rajagopal A, Sahin S, Shimron E, Larson PEZ. Synthesizing Complex-Valued Multicoil MRI Data from Magnitude-Only Images. Bioengineering (Basel). 2023 Mar 14; 10(3).  View on PubMed
  14. Rajagopal A, Redekop E, Kemisetti A, Kulkarni R, Raman S, Sarma K, Magudia K, Arnold CW, Larson PEZ. Federated Learning with Research Prototypes: Application to Multi-Center MRI-based Detection of Prostate Cancer with Diverse Histopathology. Acad Radiol. 2023 04; 30(4):644-657.  View on PubMed
  15. Malyarenko D, Amouzandeh G, Pickup S, Zhou R, Manning HC, Gammon ST, Shoghi KI, Quirk JD, Sriram R, Larson P, Lewis MT, Pautler RG, Kinahan PE, Muzi M, Chenevert TL. Evaluation of Apparent Diffusion Coefficient Repeatability and Reproducibility for Preclinical MRIs Using Standardized Procedures and a Diffusion-Weighted Imaging Phantom. Tomography. 2023 02 07; 9(1):375-386.  View on PubMed
  16. Rajagopal A, Natsuaki Y, Wangerin K, Hamdi M, An H, Sunderland JJ, Laforest R, Kinahan PE, Larson PEZ, Hope TA. Synthetic PET via Domain Translation of 3-D MRI. IEEE Trans Radiat Plasma Med Sci. 2023 Apr; 7(4):333-343.  View on PubMed
  17. Vaidya MV, Zhang B, Hong D, Brown R, Batsios G, Viswanath P, Paska J, Wulf G, Grant AK, Ronen SM, Larson PEZ. A 13C/31P surface coil to visualize metabolism and energetics in the rodent brain at 3 Tesla. J Magn Reson. 2022 10; 343:107286.  View on PubMed
  18. Vaziri S, Autry AW, Lafontaine M, Kim Y, Gordon JW, Chen HY, Hu JY, Lupo JM, Chang SM, Clarke JL, Villanueva-Meyer JE, Bush NAO, Xu D, Larson PEZ, Vigneron DB, Li Y. Assessment of higher-order singular value decomposition denoising methods on dynamic hyperpolarized [1-13C]pyruvate MRI data from patients with glioma. Neuroimage Clin. 2022; 36:103155.  View on PubMed
  19. Chen HY, Bok RA, Cooperberg MR, Nguyen HG, Shinohara K, Westphalen AC, Wang ZJ, Ohliger MA, Gebrezgiabhier D, Carvajal L, Gordon JW, Larson PEZ, Aggarwal R, Kurhanewicz J, Vigneron DB. Improving multiparametric MR-transrectal ultrasound guided fusion prostate biopsies with hyperpolarized 13 C pyruvate metabolic imaging: A technical development study. Magn Reson Med. 2022 Dec; 88(6):2609-2620.  View on PubMed
  20. 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 Oct; 49(10):6622-6634.  View on PubMed

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