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John A. Detre, MD

Principal Investigator

I am Professor of Neurology and Radiology at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. I am founding Director of the Center for Functional Neuroimaging in the Department of Radiology, co-Director of the Center for Advanced Magnetic Resonance and Spectroscopy, and Vice Chair for Research in the Department of Neurology. I received my bachelors and medical degrees from Yale, completed fellowships in biophysics at both Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pennsylvania, and completed neurology residency at Penn, where I’ve been on the faculty since 1993.

I have been continuously NIH-funded since 1993 and am author or co-author of over 300 original manuscripts. Much of my research concerns the development and validation of methods for noninvasively measuring regional cerebral blood flow, and the application of these methods in basic and clinical neuroscience. I am co-inventor of arterial spin labeled perfusion MRI, which has been translated to clinical use, but remains a powerful research tool for measuring regional brain function. I also carry out research using other MRI modalities, as well as with optical methods for bedside monitoring of brain function. My main current interests include cerebrovascular physiology and neurodegeneration, but I also work in stroke, epilepsy, traumatic brain injury, sleep, and affective disorders.

Drawing upon my interdisciplinary training, collaborations, and leadership skills, I lead efforts to provide core support for neuroimaging research on the Penn Campus. I was Principal Investigator of an NIH funded P30 Center Core in Neuroscience Neuroimaging for until early 2019 and am now co-PI of an NIH P30 Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Core. I also lead a core project on imaging brain structure and function in the NIH P41 Center for Magnetic Resonance and Optical Imaging where I also participate in technology development of metabolic imaging methods.

I am extremely active in mentoring of trainees from both biophysical and biomedical backgrounds pursuing careers in biomedical neuroimaging. I was the recipient of an NIH Mid-career Award in Patient Oriented Research and Mentoring and currently serve as Principal Investigator of an NIH training grant targeting the career development of academically oriented neurology residents and fellows and as co-PI of three additional NIH T32 training programs.

Sudipto Dolui

Research Associate

Sudipto Dolui received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Waterloo in Canada. Prior to that, he obtained his Masters (M.Tech.) from IIT Delhi, and his Bachelors of Engineering (B.E.) from Jadavpur University, both in India. He was the recipient of Dr. Shankar Dayal Sharma (former President of India) Gold Medal from IIT Delhi in 2006-07. Throughout his research career, Dr. Dolui has been involved in varied fields of signal and image processing with primary interests in image denoising, deblurring, segmentation, compressed sensing and their applications. His current focus is on developing and validating signal processing strategies for arterial spin labeling (ASL) and studying changes in cerebral blood flow (CBF) patterns in different neurodegenerative diseases.

Jeffrey Ware, MD

Postdoctoral Researcher

Dr. Ware is currently a neuroradiology fellow at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, where he completed radiology residency in 2016. Prior to radiology residency, he completed medical school at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and received a bachelor’s degree from Syracuse University. Dr. Ware’s research focuses on the application of translational neuroscience imaging techniques such as structural morphometry, diffusion imaging, functional magnetic resonance imaging and arterial spin labeling perfusion to the study and clinical evaluation of traumatic brain injury.

Eileen Hwuang

Graduate Student

Eileen Hwuang is a PhD student in bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering. She graduated from Rutgers University-New Brunswick in 2014 with a bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering. Eileen is an Interfaces Program scholar and an NSF GRFP fellow. Her research interests are in developing MRI techniques to image placental perfusion and flow. Eileen is jointly advised by Dr. John Detre and Dr. Walter Witschey.

Shokufeh Sadaghiani, MD

Postdoctoral Researcher

Shokufeh is a postdoctoral researcher working mainly on development of MRI biomarkers for neurological disorders. Her current work focuses on implementation of arterial spin labeling (ASL)-derived biomarkers in studying cerebrovascular contributions of cognitive impairment and dementia.

Prior to joining the lab, she earned her medical degree from Tehran University of Medical Sciences and her interest is translational research on diagnosis and progression of neurological diseases in order to find therapeutic targets for them.

Mohammad Taghvaei, MD, MPH

Postdoctoral Researcher

Mohammad received his M.D. from Tehran University of Medical Sciences and completed neurosurgery residency in 2017. His research interest is imaging biomarkers of neurological diseases. Mohammad currently works on the effect of age-associated white matter hyperintensity lesions on tractography-based brain structural connectivity through virtual lesion connectome approach. He also evaluates the associations between cognitive deficits and connectivity in white matter tracts that subserve different cognitive functions.

Will Tackett

Research Specialist

Will works as part of a precision neuroimaging research initiative which seeks to apply research-grade image acquisition and data processing capabilities to the clinic. His current projects involve utilizing fMRI to lateralize language and memory areas in presurgical epilepsy patients and quantifying cerebrovascular activity with ASL. Before joining the lab, he earned a BA in neuroscience from Dartmouth College and received honors for his senior thesis investigating the role of nigrostriatal dopamine in sign-tracking. He is interested in using neuroimaging to develop better understanding and treatment of neurological and psychiatric disorders.

Recent Alumni

Meng Li

Visiting Student

I am a visiting student in the major of Biomedical Engineering. I have been conducting medical imaging studies since 2015 at Northeastern University, and received the master degree in 2017. I continued my working of multimodal MRI studies(ASL/DTI/fMRI) and now aim to develop new network-based biomarkers and brain model based multimodel MRI and apply them to the diagnosis, treatment response, prognosis and understand the mechanisms of some certain neurological diseases.

Marianna Gabrielyan

Postdoctoral Researcher

I received my PhD in physics from Florida International University in 2012, specializing in particle and nuclear physics. I joined Detre Lab as a postdoctoral researcher in 2017. Currently working on perfusion phantom development with arterial spin labeled (ASL) MR imaging as well as sequence development for 7T ASL implementation.

Jianxun Qu

Research Specialist

Jianxun Qu graduated in Biomedical Engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Prior to joining detrelab, he worked for GE’s MR research team for perfusion imaging development and research collaboration with KOL hospitals in Shanghai and Beijing, China. He specializes in MR pulse sequence and his research mainly focuses on arterial spin labeling related imaging techniques.

Tianye LinVisiting Student

Tianye Lin was a visiting student researching under the supervision of Dr. Detre. She graduated from Shanghai Jiaotong University School of Medicine in 2014 with a degree in Medicine, then moved on to earn her PhD in neuroimaging at Peking Union Medical College. She is interested in the imaging of cerebrovascular disease and clinical applications of ASL fMRI.

Zhengjun Li, PhDPostdoctoral Researcher

Zhengjun Li received his B.Eng. and PhD degrees in Biomedical Engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and has been working on multimodal neuroimaging (ASL/fMRI/DTI/MRI) ever since. His broad level research interests lie in image/signal processing and machine learning techniques applied to neuroimaging data. Currently he is involved in 3D accelerated ASL and its applications, and image processing for other MRI modalities.

Marta Vidorreta, PhDPostdoctoral Researcher

Marta Vidorreta graduated in Telecommunications Engineering from Public University of Navarra in 2009. She then carried out her PhD at the Center for Applied Medical Research (CIMA) of the University of Navarra in the functional neuroimaging laboratory, under the joint mentorship of María A. Fernández-Seara and María A. Pastor. After receiving her PhD in Medicine in 2014, she joined detrelab as a postdoctoral fellow. She specializes in MRI sequence programming, and her main research focus is on optimizing arterial spin labeling MRI perfusion sequences for brain and body imaging applications.

Evan GallagherRotation Student

Evan is a 1st year PhD student in Penn’s Neuroscience Graduate Group, and he spent 4 months with the Detre Lab as part of his lab rotations. Prior to arriving at Penn, Evan received his BA in neuroscience from Middlebury College, and he went on to complete a 2-year postbaccalaureate research fellowship at the Molecular Imaging Branch of the National Institute of Mental Health. He is broadly interested in using neuroimaging approaches to understand and diagnose neurological disorders, and his main work in the Detre Lab involved task-enhanced arterial spin labeled (ASL) MRI as a potential biomarker for Alzheimer’s Disease. Evan has yet to commit to a thesis lab, but he is now beginning a PET imaging rotation with Dr. Robert Mach.

Yulin Chang, PhDPostdoctoral Researcher

Yulin received his bachelor’s degree from Peking University in 2001 and Ph.D. in physics from Washington University in St. Louis in 2006. His early work was mainly on MRI of the lung using hyperpolarized gases. In recent years he mainly focused on fast MRI using parallel imaging. While at Penn, he worked for both Dr. Felix Wehrli and Dr. Detre on fast quantification of cerebral metabolic rate of O2 (CMRO2) and accelerated cerebral blood flow (CBF) imaging using arterial spin labeling (ASL). He recently took a Research Fellow position at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Hyo Lee, MSBMEMaster’s Student

Hyo was a Bioengineering master’s student at the University of Pennsylvania from 2013 to 2015, researching under the supervision of Dr. Detre at the Center for Functional Neuroimaging. In particular, his research focused on validating a novel myelin water imaging method called ViSTa, performing data acquisition and analysis to study the neural correlates of postoperative pain using arterial spin labeled (ASL) perfusion MRI, and developing 3D-printed standard perfusion phantom for ASL MRI. Since then, Hyo has been pursuing his PhD in Electrical Engineering at ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich), where he continues to focus on brain MRI. He received his BS in Electrical Engineering at the University of Texas at Dallas and had completed an undergraduate research fellowship in MR spectroscopy at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.