Mark Griswold, Ph.D.

Mark A. Griswold, a professor in the Department of Radiology at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, has been elected to the National Academy of Inventors 2017 Fellows Program, the highest professional distinction accorded to academic inventors.

He was elected as a fellow for having “demonstrated a highly prolific spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on quality of life, economic development, and the welfare of society.”

Griswold has earned an international reputation for pioneering research and innovations in the field of biomedical imaging. With creativity that stems from his expertise in electrical engineering, physics and computer science, Griswold also believes in collaborating with visionary research colleagues from multiple academic disciplines to drive forward novel solutions. Among his contributions, he co-led the team developing and refining magnetic resonance fingerprinting—a clinical diagnostic imaging tool that analyzes tissue changes for early indications of cancer, multiple sclerosis, heart disease and other serious medical conditions… Continue reading.

Holly Witchey traveled more than 3,200 miles in seconds—and speed wasn’t even the most impressive part of the feat.

Standing in the basement of a building on Case Western Reserve University’s campus, the adjunct professor of art history and art suddenly found herself standing in The Courtauld Gallery in London, close enough to touch several of its Impressionist masterworks.

Witchey’s extraordinary experience came courtesy of Boulevard Arts, a free app now available in the Microsoft HoloLens store. The app allows those wearing Microsoft’s mixed-reality headset to see 18 works from The Courtauld Gallery and the British Museum—no matter where they are in the world.

The app, a collaboration between Boulevard Arts Inc., an immersive art and culture platform, and the university, marks Case Western Reserve’s second HoloLens store offering; HoloAnatomy, issued last year with Cleveland Clinic, was the store’s first third-party app. To date, Boulevard has eight arts and culture Virtual Reality (VR) experiences, viewable on the Samsung Gear VR and Oculus Rift with Touch Controllers… Continue reading.

Study finds MRI and MRI-guided biopsy cheaper long-term than standard ultrasound

A diagnostic MRI followed by one of three MRI-guided biopsy strategies is a cost-effective method to detect prostate cancer, according to a new study out of Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center.

Researchers compared MR-guided approaches to the current standard of transrectal ultrasound guided biopsies and found that these approaches yielded net health benefits that were well within commonly accepted threshold for costs-benefit ratios and thus are cost-effective strategies for detecting prostate cancer. The paradigm-shifting research was published in the preeminent journal Radiology.

“Many consider MRIs to be cost-prohibitive, especially when evaluating for a common entity such as prostate cancer. This was our expectation as well, prior to doing this work, but our study found the opposite. We found that performing MRI before biopsy and using that information to alter biopsy pathways would be a strategy that would add health benefits to the patient population in a cost effective manner,” said Vikas Gulani, study advisor and associate professor of radiology, urology, and biomedical engineering at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, and member of both the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center and Case Center for Imaging Research.

The study was jointly first-authored by Shivani Pahwa, department of radiology, and Nicholas Schiltz, department of biostatistics; and was developed in close collaboration with Lee Ponsky, department of urology, and Mark Griswold, department of radiology… Continue reading.

CBS News: CBS Sunday Morning featured Case Western Reserve University and Cleveland Clinic’s work with Microsoft HoloLens to teach medical students anatomy. Mark Griswold, professor of radiology, and Nicole Wise, a first-year medical student, explained how the device offers a new perspective on the human body.

At the recent 24th annual meeting of the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (ISMRM) in Singapore, Case Western Reserve University, University Hospitals Case Medical Center and Siemens Healthcare announced an exclusive research partnership to further develop a quantitative imaging method known as Magnetic Resonance Fingerprinting (MRF). University and hospital researchers and Siemens’ developers will further refine the promising method of quantitative tissue analysis.

The Case Western Reserve and UH Case Medical Center researchers who will continue to develop Magnetic Resonant Fingerprinting.

“We have been working with Siemens for over 30 years, developing and applying emerging MRI technologies, and we are excited to continue this great partnership,” said Mark Griswold, professor of radiology at Case Western Reserve and program chair at the ISMRM conference. “The goal of MR Fingerprinting is to specifically identify and characterize individual tissues and diseases, but to try to get there, we’ve had to rethink a lot of what we do in MRI.”

Could HoloLens’ augmented reality change how we study the human body? Mark Griswold, professor of radiology, discussed how HoloLens could transform education. “This is a curriculum that hasn’t drastically changed in more than 100 years, because there simply hasn’t been another way,” he said. “The mixed-reality of the HoloLens has the potential to revolutionize this education by bringing 3D content into the real world.”

A cool hand on a warmer-than-normal forehead can mean fever. But is it 100 degrees—or 103 or 105? Taking a temperature and knowing the number can be the difference between prescribing fluids and bed rest or handling a medical emergency.

Modern-day magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has long been like a hand on a forehead. MRI scans show when something in a person’s soft tissue isn’t right. But what that “something” is and how “not right” is another story.

Mark Griswold, PhD, professor of radiology and director of MRI research at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, stands to change that. After more than a decade in the lab, Griswold and his team of researchers are about to make MRIs more quantitative. That is, MRIs will take more measurements more quickly, recording more numbers—numbers that can actually help diagnose a disease.

A new method of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) could routinely spot specific cancers, multiple sclerosis, heart disease and other maladies early, when they’re most treatable, researchers at Case Western Reserve University and University Hospitals (UH) Case Medical Center suggest in the journal Nature.

Each body tissue and disease has a unique fingerprint that can be used to quickly diagnose problems, the scientists say.

By using new MRI technologies to scan for different physical properties simultaneously, the team differentiated white matter from gray matter from cerebrospinal fluid in the brain in about 12 seconds, with the promise of doing this much faster in the near future.

The technology has the potential to make an MRI scan standard procedure in annual check-ups, the authors believe. A full-body scan lasting just minutes would provide far more information and ease interpretation of the data, making diagnostics cheap compared to today’s scans, they contend.

“The overall goal is to specifically identify individual tissues and diseases, to hopefully see things and quantify things before they become a problem,” said Mark Griswold, a radiology professor at Case Western Reserve School of Medicine. “But to try to get there, we’ve had to give up everything we knew about the MRI and start over.”