Diffusion-weighted MRI already plays an important part in cancer diagnosis and therapy. With the rise of MR-guided radiotherapy a new field of applications emerges: Diffusion-weighted imaging as part of the daily workup on an MR-Linac could be used to assess and predict treatment response or identify resistant sub-volumes of the tumour, which require treatment intensification (dose-painting). Further applications are related to the assessment of radiation toxicity in risk organs in the vicinity of the treatment site.
To enable these applications, this project aims at implementing distortion-less diffusion-weighted MRI. While imaging for treatment planning on diagnostic MRI scanners would benefit from the techniques developed within this project, a particular focus will be the implementation of advanced diffusion-weighted MRI techniques on the Unity MR-Linac system. To meet the high requirements of radiotherapy in terms of spatial accuracy, in particular in the context of hypo-fractionated treatments, the successful applicant will have to combine MR pulse programming with state-of-the-art image reconstruction techniques, supported by dedicated high-performance hardware. A key aim of this project is the characterization of intravoxel incoherent motion (IVIM) with tailored diffusion-weighting gradients to characterize changes in microvasculature beyond the ADC.
The post holder will drive the work forward within a multi-disciplinary team of computer scientists, medical physicists and clinicians in the Joint Department of Physics at the Institute of Cancer Research and the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust. The start date for the post is expected to be in January 2020.
Applicants will hold a PhD in Physics, Engineering or another relevant field and ideally have experience in pulse sequence development and/or MR image reconstruction.
Please contact Dr. Andreas Wetscherek (
[email protected]), if you would like to discuss the job opportunity in more detail. To apply, please upload your CV and cover letter (addressing how you meet the person specification and including the names and contact details of two referees) using the ICR’s e-recruitment system:
www.icr.ac.uk/jobsearchVacancy ref 873
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