Walter R. Witschey, PhD

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Associate Professor of Radiology
Department: Radiology

Contact information
Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine, South Pavilion
University of Pennsylvania
3400 Civic Center Blvd.
South Pavilion, Rm. 11-155
Philadelphia, PA 19104
Office: 215-662-2310
Education:
B.S. (Physics)
University of Virginia, 2004.
Ph.D (Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics)
University of Pennsylvania, 2009.
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Description of Research Expertise

I am Director of the Advanced Cardiovascular Imaging Lab at the University of Pennsylvania. My expertise is theoretical and applied advanced imaging, especially magnetic resonance imaging and quantitative cardiovascular imaging. We use a multidisciplinary and translational approach, integrating techniques from electrical engineering, computer science, biology and bioengineering, to help patients with cardiovascular disease.

In 2018, we received a grant from the NIH National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute titled "Cardiac MR imaging of intramyocardial hemorrhage after reperfused myocardial infarction." The overall goal of this project is to investigate the magnetic properties of hemorrhage and develop MRI techniques with improved specificity to hemorrhage. New MRI techniques permit noninvasive assessment of the magnetic susceptibility of tissues and can target tissue iron. Therefore, we hypothesize that MRI imaging of myocardial magnetic susceptibility can map hemorrhagic myocardium. In this project, we are performing preclinical experiments in a pig model of reperfusion injury to validate these methods, compare them with conventional MR contrasts and develop MR methods for imaging live animals.

In 2015, together with our collaborators in Maternal and Fetal Medicine at Penn, we were awarded a grant from the NIH National Institute for Child Health and Human Development titled "Developing a multi-modality, paradigm shifting approach for in vivo assessment of the human placenta and the impact of maternal nutrition on its development and function". Our main objective is to design and validate new magnetic resonance imaging techniques to map placental health, especially using phase contrast (flow-sensitized) MRI and perfusion (arterial spin labeling) MRI.

Selected Publications

Moon BF, Iyer SK, Josselyn NJ, Hwuang E, Swago S, Keeney SJ, Castillero E, Ferrari G, Pilla JJ, Gorman JH, Gorman RC, Tschabrunn CM, Shou H, Matthai W, Wehrli FW, Ferrari VA, Han Y, Litt H, Witschey WR: Magnetic susceptibility and R2* of myocardial reperfusion injury at 3T and 7T. Magn Reson Med 2021.

Josselyn N, MacLean MT, Jean C, Fuchs B, Moon BF, Hwuang E, Iyer SK, Litt H, Han Y, Kaghazchi F, Bravo PE, Witschey WR: Classification of myocardial 18F-FDG PET Uptake Patterns Using Deep Learning. Radiol Artif Intell 2021.

MacLean MT, Jehangir Q, Vujkovic M, Ko YA, Litt H, Borthakur A, Sagreiya H, Rosen M, Mankoff DA, Schnall MD, Shou H, Chirinos J, Damrauer SM, Torigian DA, Carr R, Rader DJ, Witschey WR: Quantification of abdominal fat from computed tomography using deep learning and its association with electronic health records in an academic biobank. J Am Med Inform Assoc 2021.

Contijoch F, Han Y, Kamesh Iyer S, Kellman P, Gualtieri G, Elliott MA, Berisha S, Gorman JH 3rd, Gorman RC, Pilla JJ, Witschey WRT: Closed-loop control of k-space sampling via physiologic feedback for cine MRI. PLoS One 2020.

Brianna F. Moon, Srikant Kamesh Iyer, Eileen Hwuang, Michael P. Solomon, Anya T. Hall, Rishabh Kumar, Nicholas J. Josselyn, Elizabeth M. Higbee-Dempsey, Andrew Tsourkas, Akito Imai, Keitaro Okamoto, Yoshiaki Saito, James J. Pilla, Joseph H. Gorman III, Robert C. Gorman, Cory Tschabrunn, Samuel J. Keeney, Estibaliz Castillero, Giovanni Ferrari, Steffen Jockusch, Felix W. Wehrli, Haochang Shou, Victor A. Ferrari, Yuchi Han, Avanti Gulhane, Harold Litt, William Matthai, Walter R. Witschey: Iron imaging in myocardial infarction reperfusion injury. Nature Communications 2020 Notes: This manuscript has been accepted for publication.

Kamesh Iyer S, Moon BF, Josselyn N, Ruparel K, Roalf D, Song JW, Guiry S, Ware JB, Kurtz RM, Chawla S, Nabavizadeh SA, Witschey WR. : Data-Driven Quantitative Susceptibility Mapping Using Loss Adaptive Dipole Inversion (LADI). J Magn Reson Imaging March 2020 Notes: doi: 10.1002/jmri.27103. [Epub ahead of print]

Kamesh Iyer, S Moon, B Hwuang, E Han, Y Solomon, M Litt, H Witschey, WR: Accelerated free-breathing 3D T1rho cardiovascular magnetic resonance using multicoil compressed sensing. J. Cardiovasc. Magn. Reson 21(1), Jan 2019 Notes: doi: 10.1175/s12968-018-0507-2.

Hwuang, E Vidoretta, M Schwartz, N Moon, BF Kochar, K Tisdall, MD Detre, JA Witschey, WRT: Assessment of uterine artery geometry and hemodynamics in human pregnancy with 4d flow MRI and its correlation with Doppler US. J Magn Reson Imaging 49(1): 59-68, Jan 2019 Notes: doi: 10.1002/jmri.26229.

Markl, M., Witschey, W.R.: The EACVI Textbook of Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance. Book. Massimo Lombardi, Sven Plein, Steffen Petersen, Chiara Bucciarelli-Ducci, Emanuela Valsangiacomo Buechel, Cristina Basso, and Victor Ferrari (eds.). Dec 2018 Notes: Ch. 6. “Blood flow and phase contrast CMR”.

Stoffers RH, Madden M, Shahid M, Contijoch F, Solomon J, Pilla JJ, Gorman JH 3rd, Gorman RC, Witschey WR.: Assessment of myocardial injury after reperfused infarction by T1ρ cardiovascular magnetic resonance. 2017 Feb 15;19(1):17. doi: 10.1186/s12968-017-0332-z. J Cardiovasc Magn Reson. 19(1): 17, February 2017.

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Last updated: 09/22/2022
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