Visitor Program

Visitor Program: Professor Frank Kober, Aix-Marseille University
Organizer: Krishna Nayak
Sponsored: Spring 2014
Dr. Kober is a Senior Research Associate at “Centre de Resonance Magnetique Biologique et Medicale,” Aix-Marseille University (France). Frank heads the MR methods team in his lab and specializes in MRI sequence development and focuses on Arterial Spin Labeling Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy, mainly for cardiac applications in both rodents and humans. Frank will be visiting USC from March 24th to April 2nd in the Spring of 2014.

Research Talks by Frank Kober
March 24, 2014 -
Talk Title: Cardiovascular MR Imaging and Spectroscopy of the Rodent Heart - An Overview
Abstract: Preclinical studies are of great interest in a context of medical imaging. Rodents provide disease models for studying human pathologies in a systematic way on the one hand and a tool to setup and study the imaging techniques themselves on the other hand. Today, almost the entire range of clinical cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance methods (imaging and spectroscopy) are also available in mice and rats. But they require adaptation, and in some cases, they succeed where clinical methods fail and vice versa. This seminar gives an overview over currently available Methods and Hardware for small animal cardiovascular MRI. It introduces the motivations for doing rodent MRI studies and outlines the particularities compared with clinical studies on humans. The state of the art in MR methods is discussed using examples from own research and recent literature.

March 26, 2014 -
Talk Title: Measuring Quantitative Tissue Perfusion with MRI - Of Mice and Men
Abstract: Perfusion and its regulation are among the most important mechanisms maintaining tissue in a healthy state. Tissue blood flow is therefore also an important and often predictive marker of tissue abnormalities and dysfunction. In a clinical context, measurements of tissue perfusion are therefore frequently used for diagnosis, although mainly in ischemic events such as stroke in the brain or myocardial infarction. These pathologies lead to focal perfusion defects, which only require relative mapping of tissue perfusion providing a comparison between affected and healthy regions. But, in a clinical and preclinical research context they are also considered for monitoring the evolution of diseases and the potentially associated treatment responses, in which case these measurements must be at least semi-quantitative. This seminar introduces method principles for measuring tissue perfusion with MRI. By considering and comparing physiology and anatomy between mice and men and the potential requirement of quantification, the performance and the pros and cons of the existing methods are discussed.