Norbert Pelc

Administrative Appointments

• Associate Chair, Stanford University School of Medicine - Radiology (2004 - present)

Honors and Awards

• Fellow, American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (2006)
• Fellow, Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (-)
• Fellow, Council on Cardiovascular Radiology, American Heart Association (-)
• Young Investigator Award, ISMRM (1999, 2003)
• Research Fellow Award, RSNA (2001, 2002, 2004)

Professional Education

Postdoctoral Advisees

Jong Duk Baek, Samuel Mazin

Graduate & Fellowship Program Affiliations

• Radiology
• Bioengineering

Industry Relationships

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Research Interests

Medical imaging has made enormous strides in recent decades. In clinical medicine, imaging plays an increasingly important role in patient care. A recent study found that internists rank the development of computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), together, as the most important innovation in medicine (Health Affairs, Vol 20, p. 30, 2001). At the same time, experts in a completely different scientific field, the National Academy of Engineering, ranks the development of imaging as one of the top 20 greatest engineering achievements of the 20th century (www.greatachievements.org), amazingly at a rank higher than that of household appliances and nuclear technology. Imaging is also taking on an increasing role in research, improving our understanding of both normal and diseased states and as a surrogate endpoint in the evaluation of therapies. Imaging allows serial studies in the same individual, thereby increasing statistical power and reducing the number of subjects needed in a study. Imaging is also a powerful tool to guide minimally invasive therapies.

The effectiveness of imaging and the powerful impact of visual images have led to a major increase in the utilization of this strategy, a trend that will continue but will evolve in coming years. Further advances will lead to improved detection, localization, and characterization of disease which should enable more accurate selection of optimized therapies for individual subjects (personalized medicine) as well as treatments that are more effective, less expensive, and less traumatic. Imaging will also play an increasingly important role in the challenges facing biomedical research.

There are many imaging “modalities”, each acquiring data using physical mechanisms such as x-ray transmission, nuclear magnetic resonance, acoustic or optical properties, and signals from radioactive tracers. Optimal design and utilization of each requires an appreciation of the underlying physical...

Publications

• Simulations of virtual PET/CT 3-D bronchoscopy imaging using a physical porcine lung-heart phantom. Yerushalmi D, Mullick R, Quon A, Fahrig R, Pelc NJ, Fann JI, Gambhir SS. Mol Imaging Biol. 2009 Jul-Aug; 11 (4): 275-82
• Direct two-dimensional reconstruction algorithm for an inverse-geometry CT system. Baek J, Pelc NJ. Med Phys. 2009; 36 (2): 394-401
• Understanding and controlling the effect of lossy raw data compression on CT images. Wang AS, Pelc NJ. Med Phys. 2009; 36 (8): 3643-53
• Shimming with permanent magnets for the x-ray detector in a hybrid x-ray/ MR system. Wen Z, Fahrig R, Williams ST, Pelc NJ. Med Phys. 2008; 35 (9): 3895-902
• Noise considerations of three-point water-fat separation imaging methods. Wen Z, Reeder SB, Pineda AR, Pelc NJ. Med Phys. 2008; 35 (8): 3597-606