rads & mdphd & research

This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.

chef

Senior Member
15+ Year Member
20+ Year Member
Joined
Nov 6, 2001
Messages
1,004
Reaction score
1
1. are there any mdphds in rads? are mudphuds sought after by PDs like ent, ophtho, derm??

2. are there much areas for research and advancement of the field by rads, or is that done by private companies mostly and rads are end users only?

3. do rads get lots of handson experience on the latest equipment and tech? i'm a tech junkie, but it seems like all the "playin w/ the toys" part is done by techs and rads only read films

4. what are the top5 research rads programs in the country?

Members don't see this ad.
 
Originally posted by chef
1. are there any mdphds in rads? are mudphuds sought after by PDs like ent, ophtho, derm??

I'm not a doc yet but I work with a good number of rads and I've noticed a decent number of MD/PhDs. Dont know about the other specialties.

2. are there much areas for research and advancement of the field by rads, or is that done by private companies mostly and rads are end users only?

Its mixed. I work in an interventional radiology lab, we do primarily MRI work but also some optical, CT, ultrasound, etc. For MR, pulse sequences are generally designed in the corporate world. We have a team of GE scientists at our MRI research facility that develop new pulse sequences for our use and also for general incorporation in to the GE signa scanners.

Interventional radiology is a blast. We get to develop new technical procedures and protocols but we also get to move them into the clinical therapeutics area very quickly, MUCH more quickly than a typical wetlab would do. For example, one of the guys in our lab is working on using MR to track injections of migrating magnetically-labeled stem cells for myocardial infarction treatments. Another guy is working on MR-guided imaging of coronary vessels with intralumenal coils. Another person is working on MR-guidance of brain injections for glioblastoma (its hard to get drugs to the tumor because of the blood-brain barrier).

Radiologists generally lack the physics skills to develop new pulse sequences from scratch. Usually they have to collaborate with physicists.

There are some new pulse sequences that are done 100% in academia, but for the majority of them I'd say it involves heavy collaboration between industry and academics.

A big push in research in rads now is to correlate the various imaging modalities into a comprehensive system for diagnosis and treatment. For example, we might want to use MRI to get a detailed anatomical view, and incorporate PET to use molecular imaging of cancer cell surface markers. PET by itself has too low of a spatial resolution to be clinically useful, but with cross-correlation with MR images it becomes a very powerful tool.

Molecular imaging in general is going to be a huge push in the future. Also, I think MR spectroscopy will grow. Recently one of my colleagues published a paper in Science on MR imaging of Na+ (instead of H+) to detect early cancers.

3. do rads get lots of handson experience on the latest equipment and tech? i'm a tech junkie, but it seems like all the "playin w/ the toys" part is done by techs and rads only read films

In the clinical realm, I'd say thats true. But the rads techs dont do THAT much playing wtih toys. They just enter the sequence parameters into the console and monitor the scan sequence. Its kind of mind-numbing for the most-part. Interventional rads is the way to go if you like procedures, working with patients, AND getting your hands dirty in research that can involve lots of math/engineering and go quickly to patient-centered application. If you are more interested in the cerebral processes of puzzle solving then diagnostic rads would probably fit you better.

In the research realm, rads MDs can get their hands dirty so to speak, but most of the rads that get involved wtih the heavy physics and engineering aspect have to collaborate with an engineer/physicist, had a background in math/engineering in college, or they have to spend a non-trivial amount of time learning about the physics and math.

For example, I am working on a new variant of diffusion tensor imaging (MRI) to analyze drug distribution and correlation to micrometer-scale duct imaging in the prostate. Hopefully this will allow us to develop a "smart" injection plan for prostate injections under MR guidance. Currently, TRUS (trans-rectal ultrasound) is used and for the most part imaging the prostate with TRUS sucks. Internal soft tissue contrast is poor, tumor targets are basically invisible, and over 50% of all injections miss their targets. Surgery is an alternative, yet also unattractive because radical prostatectomy results in incontinence and sexual impotence (usually).

I had to develop some special coils for the MR scanner (the standard pelvic phased array coils are not optimal for prostate imaging), which involved a heavy dose of electrical engineering theory. In addition, I had to develop the pulse sequence, which is physics-intensive, and work on a reconstruction algorithm, which requires a lot of computer science skills. A typical rads MD would not be able to do this without collaboration with an engineer/physicist (of course there are always exceptions).

Before I could even get started I had to do a serious review of physics and principles of RF-spectrum electromagnetic radiation and other topics (I have a background in electrical/computer engineering).

What kind of rads work do you want to do? Heavy math/engineering involvement? Or do you just want to do more clinically-oriented research? Clinical research in rads seems fairly mundane to me, unless it involves molecular imaging.

4. what are the top5 research rads programs in the country?

I'd guess that Mallinkrodt @ WashU St Louis is up there. After that, I cant say.
 
Top