On Friday 4 May 2018, PhD student Jan Ole Pedersen from
Center for Magnetic Resonance succesfully defended his PhD on
Encoding of non-MR Signals in Magnetic Resonance Imaging.Examiners at the defence were Professor Andrew Webb, Leiden University Medical Center, Associate Professor Steffen Ringgaard from Aarhus University, with Associate Professor Esben Thade Petersen from DTU Elektro.
The defence took a little over two hours. It ended with a unanimous recommendation from the examiners' committee that the PhD degree should be conferred on Jan Ole Pedersen for novel scientific work that will attract interest from the MR community.
Jan's PhD project has focused on obtaining greater MR image quality by combining MRI recordings with non-MRI data acquired by the scanner simultaneously. Using separate channels of the scanner for modulated non-MR signals, it is possible to measure each with the same temporal resolution as the MR recording and in perfect synchronicity with this. As part of the project, Jan has also developed electronics for real-time processing of signals acquired during MRI, assisted by external consultants.
The developed methods enhance the applicability of MRI by addressing known MRI challenges such as patient motion correction and hardware imperfections in an elegant and economical manner. At the defence, Jan presented three different applications for the developed system.
Jan's research has been supported by Sino Danish Center for Education and Research. He has spent 9 months at Institute of Biophysics, Beijing, China, carrying out his research and engaging in teaching activities. In Denmark, Jan has collaborated with DRCMR at Hvidovre Hospital, providing access to MR scanners.
Supervisors were Associate Professor Lars G. Hanson, Associate Professor Vitaliy Zhurbenko and Professor Rong Xue from Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
A final version of the PhD thesis will be available for download from DTU Orbit in a short while: http://orbit.dtu.dk/en/persons/jan-ole-pedersen(b58f4f37-f667-41a6-ae81-9c3ddfe2f513)/publications.html.
Top photo from left: Andrew Webb, Steffen Ringgaard, Jan Ole Pedersen, Christian Hanson, Lars G. Hanson, Esben Thade Petersen, and Vitaliy Zhurbenko.
