Lab News

Lab News

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October 2024

Welcome Tonio!

Tonio Peng has started as a graduate rotation student in the lab. Tonio will be working on the development of neural-network-based algorithms for cardiopulmonary MRI reconstruction.

October 2024

Our summer intern Samantha Stebbings' scholarly project proposal on AI reconstruction for 3D cardiac cine was accepted by Purdue University. Dr. Zou will serve as the mentor of this project. Congrats Sammie and looking forward to working with you on the project.

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September 2024

Welcome Dr. Erdem

Dr. Sukran Erdem, one of the previous clinical fellows on advanced cardiac imaging, joined the lab as a research scientist. She will be working on translational cardiology research using advanced Cardiac imaging.

August 2024

Samantha Stebbings and Alexandra Jack presented their research work done during their summer intern to public audience.

June 2024

Samantha Stebbings, Alexandra Jack, Nikash Kakarla joined the lab as summer interns. They will be working on projects related to AI for MRI reconstruction, as well as application of novel sequences for whole-heart MRI.

May 2024

Corbin has presented his work on using unsupervised learning schemes for cardiac MRI spatial and temporal resolution manipulation to UT Southwestern audiences who are interested in AI research in health care.

May 2024

The group has presented the works happened in the lab at the 2024 Annual meeting of International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (ISMRM) in Singapore.

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April 2024

TRC4 funding

Dr. Zou's proposal on using fast CMR protocol for chest trauma diagnosis and evaluation is funded by Trauma Research and Combat Casualty Care Collaborative (TRC4). This award will give the lab $200,000 for studying the clinical feasibility of a fast CMR protocol.

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March 2024

2024 Haberecht Wildhare Grant

Dr. Zou's proposal on developing fast CMR protocol is selected to be funded by 2024 Haberecht Wildhare Grant at UTSW. The grant will give $30,000 to the group for developing a fast CMR protocol.

February 2024

Dr. Zou presented his idea on using fast CMR for chest trauma diagnosis and evaluation at 2024 UT System Trauma Symposium sponsored by Trauma Research and Combat Casualty Care Collaborative (TRC4) at UT Austin.

February 2024

Dr. Zou visited Siemens Erlangen (Germany) to meet the leadership of the MRI team for the discussion of the low-field MRI project at Children's Medical Center at Dallas.

January 2024

The group has presents works on how novel sequences can advance the care of patients with congenital and acquired heart diseases at the 2024 Annual meeting of Society for Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance (SCMR) in London, UK.

June 2023

Anna Andrews joined the lab as a summer intern for 10 weeks. She will work on 3D cardiac cine denoising using a manifold-based algorithm.

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May 2023

Welcome to the lab, Corbin!

Corbin Maciel joined the lab as a graduate student. Corbin will work on deep-learning framework validation for cardiac MRI processing.

January 2023

Dr. Zou presented his work on using unsupervised learning for cardiac MRI processing at the 2023 Annual Meeting of Society for Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance in San Diego.

December 2022

Dr. Zou has joined UT Southwestern Medical Center as a tenure-track Assistant Professor, and started to serve as the lead cardiac MR physicist in the Heart Center of Children's Medical Center at Dallas.

News and announcements from Zou Lab at UT Southwestern

Research

Research

Deep learning for cardiopulmonary MRI processing

One of the research objects in the lab is on the development of deep-learning algorithms for cardiopulmonary MRI processing, especially the development of unsupervised learning algorithms. We are interested in 2D and 3D cardiopulmonary MRI reconstruction, denoising, super-resolution and segmentation. In this objective, we have developed several algorithms such as G-SToRM, MoCo-SToRM, V-SToRM for real-time cardiopulmonary processing. These work on real-time cardiopulmonary processing wothe best paper award in 2020, and the best paper award finalist in 2021 at IEEE International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging (IEEE ISBI). We've also extended the above algorithms for better performances based on recent advances in deep learning such as the inclusion of Spatial Transformer Networks (STN), Implicit Neural Representations (INR), Graph Convolutional Network (GCN),Kernel method into the algorithms.

Placeholder 3D Lung MRI
Placeholder Multi-slice Cardiac Cine
Placeholder Multi-Contrast cardiac Cine

Pulse sequences development for cardiopulmonary MRI

The second line of research in the lab is on the development of novel fast 2D and 3D cardiopulmonary MRI pulse sequences for the care of patients with congenital and acquired heart diseases. This includes the development of fast 2D or 3D sequences for myocardial quantification, such as multi-tasking sequences, MR fingerprinting sequences. We are also interested in developing robust fast 3D MR angiography sequences, 3D lung sequences based on ultra-short echo time (UTE) sequences and non-contrast-enhanced 3D whole-heart sequences

react Non-Contrast-enhanced 3D whole-heart MRI

Translational cardiology research using advanced Cardiac imaging

Our lab also shows interest in developing new imaging biomarkers for congenital and acquired heart diseases. For example, we would like to develop new image biomarkers based on Magnetization transfer (MT) and Chemical exchange saturation transfer (CEST) for the quantification of myocardium without using Gadolinium-based contrast agents (GBCAs) for patients with acquired heart diseases. We are also interesting in developing new quantitative imaging biomarkers for the monitor of diseases progression for patients with congenital heart diseases, especially the patients with single-ventricle physiology.

Placeholder Quantify the level of water in the lung

Research projects at Zou Lab at UT Southwestern

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