On Wednesday 2 July 2019, PhD student Rie Beck Hansen from Center for Hyperpolarization in Magnetic Resonance succesfully defended her PhD thesis on Parallel imaging for hyperpolarized metabolic magnetic resonance imaging.
Examiners at the defence were Professor Damian Tyler, University of Oxford, Associate Professor Charles Cunningham, Sunnybrook Research Institute/University of Toronto, and Associate Professor Kristoffer Hougaard Madsen, DTU.
The defence ended with a unanimous recommendation from the examiners' committee that the PhD degree should be conferred on Rie Beck Hansen for important advances of the field, not least demonstrations of the technical feasibility of accelerated hyperpolarised 13C in vivo MR imaging using parallel imaging techniques.
Chairperson at the defence was Clinical Associate Professor Julie Engelhard Christensen, DTU.
The overall aim of Rie’s PhD research has been to develop and implement parallel imaging methods to accelerate data acquisition for hyperpolarized MR imaging, and her thesis also considers coil characterization, coil sensitivity calibration and image reconstruction. Hyperpolarization is a novel technology, which enhances the MR signal dramatically, enabling unique real time metabolic measurements in vivo. Hyperpolarized MR has the potential to become a game changer in e.g. diagnosis, staging and monitoring of response to treatment of cancer, or brain or cardiovascular disease. However, a fast decay of the hyperpolarized signal demands novel accelerated data acquisition methods in order to achieve robust imaging for clinical applications.
Rie's research has been supported by Independent Research Fund Denmark and Danish National Research Foundation as part of DTU's HYPERMAG Center of Excellence. It would not have been possible without a collaboration with Aarhus University's MR Research Centre for scanner testing. For more information, please visit http://www.hypermag.dtu.dk/research/phd-projects/rie-beck-hansen.
Supervisors were Professor Jan Henrik Ardenkjær-Larsen and Associate Professor Lars G. Hanson, both DTU.
A final version of the PhD thesis will be available for download from DTU Orbit shortly, where Rie's published work is already available: https://orbit.dtu.dk/en/persons/rie-beck-hansen(8214cd7c-cdb4-4678-b17b-bbd3f5d87ece)/publications.html.
Top photo: Examiner committee, supervisors and PhD - from left to right, Kristoffer H. Madsen, DTU Compute, Damian Tyler, University of Oxford, Assoc Prof Lars G. Hanson, DTU, Rie Beck Hansen, Professor Jan Henrik Ardenkjær-Larsen, DTU and Charles Cunningham, University of Toronto.
Bottom photo: Rie Beck Hansen at the defense.