Hounsfield Memorial Lecture 2015: Magnetic Resonance Imaging: Visions of Life

by Jo Seed

17 November 2015

Imperial staff and students welcomed chemist and medical physicist Professor Jürgen Hennig to Imperial for the annual Hounsfield Lecture.

The Hounsfield Memorial Lecture brings together medical imaging researchers at Imperial and beyond and allows an international leader in biomedical imaging to address the College imaging community.

The Hounsfield Lecture 2015 was given on Wednesday 4th November by Professor Juergen Hennig from the University Medical Center Freiburg. Professor Hennig is a German chemist and medical physicist, internationally renowned for his work as one of the pioneers of Magnetic Resonance Imaging for clinical diagnostics. He is an alumnus of Imperial and also studied at the Universities of Stuttgart, Munich and Freiburg, where he currently works as Scientific Director of the Department of Diagnostic Radiology and Chairman of the Magnetic Resonance Development and Application Center. His awards include the Biosciences and Medicine Max Planck Research Award (2003), the highest scientific award of Taiwan - Tsung Ming Tu Award (2010), and an Einstein professorship from the Chinese Academy of Science (2011).

Professor Hennig giving the lecture

Professor Hennig talked about current innovations in Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), which has been around for more than 30 years, but is still undergoing rapid development. This progress is being driven by innovative technologies as well as new challenges and opportunities arising from new advancements in biomedical research. The introduction of new technologies is expected to lead to incremental improvements in current approaches to MRI, as well as new applications.

Although MRI has come a long way since its early stages, it still has far to go.

Poster competition and workshops

The event also featured workshops in the afternoon and a medical imaging poster viewing event and competition.

Four interactive workshops were organised, including:

The winning poster was:

High resolution 3D MRI reveals continuous adverse effects of systolic blood pressure on left ventricular structure

by Antonio de Marvao from the MRC Clinical Sciences Centre.

Winner Antonio de Marvao from the MRC Clinical Sciences Centre

The joint runners-up were:

Investigating the Causal Relationship Between Perturbed Shear Stress and Formation of Progressive Atherosclerotic Plaques and Thin Cap Fibroatheroma in Transgenic Hypercholesterolaemic Minipigs

by Nilesh Pareek

and

Tractography of the Prostatic Neurovascular Bundles: Technique and Interpretation

by Amish Lakhani

Photos from the event can be viewed on our Flickr pages here.

The Imperial Hounsfield Memorial Lecture series was first launched in 2005, in memory of imaging scientist and Nobel Laureate Sir Godfrey Hounsfield.

Advances in biomedical imaging technology have allowed tremendous progress in diagnostic and surgical imaging since the first X-ray. Each new development has been based on fundamental scientific progress in science and engineering, resulting in Nobel prizes in medicine for the non-medically trained inventors of techniques such as CT and MRI. Activity that brings together scientists, engineers and clinicians can promote further technological breakthroughs. The Hounsfield Lecture is one such opportunity and allows an international leader in biomedical imaging to address the college imaging community. The event acts as a focus to bring together medical imaging researchers at ICL and beyond and features a poster viewing event and competition that attracts high numbers of submissions from across all faculties. The inaugural event was presented in 2005 and the last was in 2009. Past speakers at the event include James Fujimoto, Rakesh K Jain, Peter Hunter, Sam Gambhir and Robert Balaban.

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