Introduction: A recognized leader in the development and evaluation of new CT technology and dose reduction methods, Cynthia H. McCollough, PhD, is the Brooks-Hollern Professor of Research at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, where she holds the rank of professor in both medical physics and biomedical engineering.
Dr. McCollough’s research revolves around the technology of CT imaging and its many clinical applications. As founder and director of Mayo’s CT Clinical Innovation Center, she leads a multidisciplinary team of physicians, scientists, and trainees to develop and translate into clinical practice new CT technologies and clinical applications. Dr. McCollough has contributed extensively to the fields of cardiac, dual-energy, and photon-counting-detector CT, and quantifies the impact of new CT technologies on diagnostic performance. She has also contributed extensively to the measurement, management, and reduction of CT radiation dose and to the education of health care personnel and the public on the safety of medical imaging.
Dr. McCollough has over 400 peer-reviewed papers related to CT imaging, is the principal investigator for multiple NIH grants, and is active in numerous professional organizations. She is a past president of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine and a fellow of the American College of Radiology, the American Association of Physicists in Medicine, and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. Dr. McCollough received her bachelor’s degree in physics from Hope College in Holland, Michigan and her master’s and doctorate degrees in medical physics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Presentation: Medical Imaging: Making the Invisible Visible
Imaging of the internal organs and tissues of the body began in 1895, when Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen took the first x-ray image and showed the world the bones of her hand. Within months, the technique had spread around the world and the field of Radiology began. Today, medical imaging uses electromagnetic and acoustic waves to peer inside the human body to determine the causes of human illness and injury. Medical imaging is further used to guide therapeutic procedures and surgeries. All medical imaging involves the use of radiation to interact with human tissue and a detector to record that interaction. From the measured data, images can be created to describe the anatomic and physiological condition of a patient. Common forms of medical imaging include static x-ray imaging (radiography), dynamic x-ray imaging (fluoroscopy), computerized tomographic x-ray imaging (CT), ultrasound imaging (US), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and nuclear medicine and molecular imaging (NMMI). All these methods take advantage of unique interaction mechanisms between the energy source and the patient and require a detector that is sensitive to the change in signal due to disease or injury, mechanisms that are guided by physics principles. Medical physics is a branch of physics that applies knowledge of these interactions, as well as biomedical engineering technology, to provide the right image to the patient at the right time using the right radiation dose. Medical physicists work in hospitals, community clinics, large academic medical centers, universities, large medical centers, industry, and the government to advance the safe and effective imaging of patients, as well to support clinical practice, clinical research, and basic research. In this seminar, Dr. McCollough with introduce our students to the fascinating world of medical physics and the technologies that medical physicists develop, implement, and oversee. She will also describe the introduction of x-ray CT and show the tremendous advances that have taken place in that field in the last 50 years.
