The Office of Research is hosting a lecture by Dr. Michael D. Noseworthy from McMaster University.
When: Thursday, May 16, 2024 | 2:30 - 4 p.m.
Where: in-person
For more information about registration, please contact Kenrick Vassall.
About the lecture
When a person experiences an acute brain injury, such as a concussion, if/when imaging is done it is typically computed tomography (CT). The goal of CT is to rule out cerebral bleeds that would require immediate intervention. When bleeds are absent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) may or may not be done. Even though routine CT and MRI both show tremendous brain structural detail, concussion most often does not present with any abnormal features. This is frustrating for clinicians, and more so for patients who truly are suffering and are left without answers or treatment options. Thus, there has been a great deal of interest in developing methods to spatially localize and grade concussion, with the hopes of also monitoring recovery and/or treatment. Many have turned to single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) which although safe, involves intravenous injection of radioactive tracer and a CT scan. In the last 6 years, Dr. Noseworthy has moved away from ionizing radiation for this disorder. The more recent work done by his group has focused on resting-state functional MRI and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). These are not new methods for assessing brain injury but their application has been through group-based statistical designs. In his lab they look at concussion as a problem that is unique to every patient and as such requires an individual assessment. They have developed algorithms and been applying ‘big data’ approaches that allow the personalizing of brain injury evaluation using these routine MRI sequences. In this talk, Dr. Noseworthy will present results from several acute concussion studies and also show results from work they have done on professional athletes who have suffered an undocumented number of acute brain injuries during their careers.
Dr. Michael D. Noseworthy, Ph.D., PEng Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering McMaster University Associate Chair (research), Dept. of Radiology Special Professional Staff, Hamilton Health Sciences and St. Joseph’s Healthcare (Radiology and Nuclear Medicine)
About the speaker
Dr. Michael D. Noseworthy, PhD, received an M.Sc. for work in the evaluation of anaesthetic hepatotoxicity using NMR imaging and in vivo 31P-NMR in 1992 from the University of Guelph. His PhD, also from the University of Guelph (1996), focused on applications of MRI/NMR and electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) methods to assess free radical induced brain damage. From 1996-1999, he was a postdoctoral fellow in Imaging Physics at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre working on the evaluation of tissue microvasculature through the development of correlative MRI and energy dispersive X-ray microanalysis (EDXS). From January 2000 to August 2003, he worked as an MRI physicist at The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, and Assistant Professor in Medical Biophysics and Medical Imaging at the University of Toronto. Dr. Noseworthy moved to St. Joseph’s Healthcare and McMaster University in August 2003. Following 3 years as an Assistant Professor in Radiology and Medical Physics, Dr. Noseworthy obtained a tenure track position in Electrical & Computer Engineering at McMaster University, where he currently resides as a full professor. At McMaster University from 2009 to 2020, he was the Director of the McMaster School of Biomedical Engineering. He has been the Director of Imaging Physics and Engineering at the Imaging Research Centre, at St. Joseph’s Healthcare, Hamilton since 2003 and more recently helped found the Centre for Integrative and Advanced Medical Imaging (CIAMI) at McMaster University. Dr. Noseworthy also has Special Professional Staff status at St. Joseph’s Healthcare and Hamilton Health Sciences in both Radiology and Nuclear Medicine and is the Associate Co-Chair (Research) for the department of Medical Imaging. Dr. Noseworthy has trained over 80 graduate students and post-docs and has published over 170 journal papers and over 330 conference papers and abstracts. He has given over 160 invited lectures globally. His research interests include the assessment of tissue microstructure and metabolism using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and multinuclear in vivo nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopic techniques, and the application of complex systems mathematics and machine learning to medical image analysis. Dr. Noseworthy is a member of the Professional Engineers of Ontario (PEO), International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (ISMRM) and European Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine and Biology (ESMRMB).