People - Magnetic Resonance Imaging Group

Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Professor, Institute for Medical Engineering and Science
elfar@mit.edu | RLE Biography

I hold appointments in the department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES) at MIT. Our trainees apply their interdisciplinary skills to medical imaging with MRI at the intersection of engineering, physics, science, and medicine.

My current research interests include algorithms and hardware for parallel transmission (pTx), quantitative estimation and management of local power deposition and temperature in MRI, imaging of the fetus and placenta, oxygenation parameter imaging with MRI, sparsity properties in excitation and acquisition in MRI, compressed sensing, magnetic resonance fingerprinting, and reconstructions of dramatically undersampled MR imaging and spectroscopy.

From 2010 to 2016 I served as Associate Director of the Madrid-MIT M+Visión Consortium, http://mvisionconsortium.mit.edu. The Consortium is a partnership of leaders in science, medicine, engineering, business, and the public sector dedicated to catalyzing change in Madrid’s healthcare innovation ecosystem by accelerating translational research and encouraging entrepreneurship.

Administrative Assistant
mriAdmin@mit.edu

Megumi is the administrative assistant for the Magnetic Resonance Imaging Group. She provides administrative support to Prof. Elfar Adalsteinsson and his students.

Yamin earned his BS in Electrical Engineering at Rice University in 2017 before starting the EECS PhD program at MIT.  He is currently working on improving the image contrast one can acquire in fetal MRI imaging using forward simulations of pulse sequences and accelerated image reconstruction techniques.

Junshen graduated from Tsinghua University in 2018 with a BS in Engineering Physics before starting his PhD at MIT EECS. He is currently working on deep learning methods for fetal pose estimation from volumetric MRI and automatic slice-prescription system.

Molin received his B.S. degree in Engineering Physics from Tsinghua University in 2019 before starting his EECS PhD program at MIT. Currently he’s working on reinforcement learning methods for landmarks detection of fetal pose and zoomed fetal imaging using shimmed coils.

auddie@stanford.edu

Audrey graduated from Stanford University in 2008 with B.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Biological Sciences. She completed her S.M. degree with the MRI Group in 2010. Audrey is supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. She is interested in quantification of venous oxygen saturation (Yv) and the cerebral metabolic rate of oxygen (CMRO2) in human brains using MRI. Her project includes development of a technique called PROM (Phase-based Regional Oxygen Metabolism) and application to functional imaging and clinical studies, including in patients with multiple sclerosis.

Alumni: M.Eng. 2013
ohashem@mit.edu

Obaidah joined the MRI group in January 2011. He completed his M.Eng. degree with the MRI Group in 2013. His research interest includes medical images reconstruction and MRI imaging acceleration.

Alumni: Ph.D. 2013
berkin@mit.edu | Website

Berkin received his B.S. degrees in Electrical and Electronics Engineering and Physics from Bogazici University in 2008, and his S.M. degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT in 2010. He joined the MRI group in the Research Laboratory of Electronics in February 2010, and completed his Ph.D. degree in 2013.

At MIT, he worked on fast object detection algorithms with Prof. Berthold Horn and Dr. Ichiro Masaki which concluded with his S.M. thesis.

After switching to MRI from computer vision for his doctoral degree, his main research interests include developing image reconstruction algorithms to speed up data acquisition, magnetic susceptibility mapping and artifact reduction in spectroscopic imaging.

Berkin is supported by an MIT/CIMIT Fellowship, and he is the recipient of an MIT-DuPont Presidential Fellowship.

S.M. Thesis: "Fast human detection with cascaded ensembles" [pdf]
Ph.D. Thesis: "Reconstruction Algorithms for MRI" [pdf]

Alumni: Ph.D. 2012
trina@mit.edu

Trina received her bachelors degree from Duke University in 2005 and masters degree from MIT in 2009. She is a recipient of Singapore's A*STAR BS-PhD National Science Scholarship from 2002-2010 and joined A*STAR's Institute for Infocomm Research upon graduation from Duke in 2005. At MIT, Trina's work involves fast spiral spectroscopic imaging with 2D spectroscopy sequences e.g. CT-PRESS. She in interested in improving the detection and quantitation of metabolites and works to apply such techniques in clinical settings. She enjoys jogging, dancing, learning languages and traveling.

S.M. Thesis: "Detection of brain metabolites in magnetic resonance spectroscopy"
Ph.D. Thesis: "Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopic Imaging with 2D Spectroscopy for the Detection of Brain Metabolites"

Shao Ying did electromagnetic modeling and experiments for magnetic resonance (MR) imaging in high field systems. Her expertise includes electromagnetic modeling using numerical methods and analytical approaches.

She has rich experiences on computational electromagnetic using integral equation methods, EM modeling and designs for surface plasmonic circuits and surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS), designs of microwave circuit components.

She likes jogging, hiking, traveling, photographing, and cooking.

Alumni : Ph.D. 2011
gagoski@mit.edu

Borjan Gagoski received his BS degree with distinct honors from RPI in 2004. He came to MIT in the Fall of 2004, finishing his MS degree at 2006, and PhD in 2011. His early research included the implementation of fast encoding schemes for spectroscopic imaging on Siemens MR platforms. During the last several years of his PhD, he was involved in the development of RF pulse designs using parallel RF transmission (pTx) at 7T MRI systems, for the purpose of improved spectral-spatial mitigation used in chemical shift imaging (CSI) applications. His current work as a postdoctoral associate still mainly focuses on the improvement of the excitation part of a pTx experiment. In addition, some of his time is also spent on applying the fast CSI encoding readouts in clinical settings at 3T, obtaining volumetric metabolites' maps on patient populations diagnosed with Tay-Sachs, X-link adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD) and brain tumors.

Borjan comes from Skopje, Republic of Macedonia. He likes to spend his free time playing tennis, hiking and skiing.

S.M. Thesis: "Fast magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging using RF coil arrays"
Ph.D. Thesis: "Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopic Imaging using Parallel Transmission at 7 Tesla" [pdf]

Alumni: Ph.D. 2011
joonsung@mit.edu

Ph.D. Thesis: "Excitation and Readout Designs for High Field MR Spectroscopic Imaging"

Graduate Student
lkini@mit.edu

M.Eng. Thesis: "Fast simulation of E1, B1 and Specific Absorption Rate for 7T MRI with the use of graphical processors"

Alumni: Ph.D. 2010
dbolar@nmr.mgh.harvard.edu

S.M. Thesis: "Accuracy of pulsed arterial spin labeling magnetic resonance imaging in the human brain : tag width and timing effects"
Ph.D. Thesis: "Magnetic resonance imaging of the cerebral metabolic rate of oxygen (CMRO2)"

Currently, finishing M3/M4 years at Harvard Medical School.

Alumni: Ph.D. 2008
padraig@alum.mit.edu | (homepage)

Ph.D. Thesis: "On the Dynamics of Magnetic Fluids in Magnetic Resonance Imaging" [pdf]

Currently, Lecturer in Electrical and Electronic Engineering at University College Cork, Ireland.

Alumni: M.Eng. 2007
joseph.cheng@alum.mit.edu

M.Eng. Thesis: "Gradient Characterization in Magnetic Resonance Imaging" [pdf]

Currently, Ph.D. student at Stanford University Dept of EE.

Alumni: Ph.D. 2008
zelinski@alum.mit.edu | (homepage)

Ph.D. Thesis: "Improvements in Magnetic Resonance Imaging Excitation Pulse Design" [pdf]

Currently, High Frequency Trader at GETCO.

Alumni: Ph.D. 2008
kawin@alum.mit.edu

Ph.D. Thesis: "Design Algorithms for Parallel Transmission in Magnetic Resonance Imaging" [pdf]

Currently, Assistant Professor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School/MGH.

Graduate Student
jbernier@mit.edu

Jessica graduated from the University of Arizona in 2009 with B.S. degrees in Physics and Mathematics.  She is aiming to complete her S.M. degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in 2011.  Her current research focus is the numerical simulation of electromagnetic fields generated in parallel RF transmission (pTx) coils in 7T MRI systems.

When she is not in the lab, Jessica enjoys ballroom dancing, both socially as the Treasurer of the MIT Ballroom Dance Club and competitively with the MIT Ballroom Dance Team.

Graduate Student
ichatnun@mit.edu

Itthi graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in 2011 with B.S. degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Biomedical Engineering. He received his S.M. degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT in 2013. He joined the Magnetic Resonance Imaging Group in February 2012, and is currently pursuing his Ph.D. degree. He is interested in developing data reconstruction algorithms for MRI.

S.M. Thesis: “Model-Based Reconstruction of Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopic Imaging"

Graduate Student
jstout@mit.edu

Jeff earned his BS in Physics from the University of Denver, and an MPhil in the History of Science from Oxford before starting the Health Sciences and Technology, Medical Engineering and Medical Physics PhD program at MIT and Harvard Medical School. He is interested in using MRI to quantitatively measure brain physiology. His current projects include measuring the effects of motion on cerebral oxygenation measurements using TRUST and developing the turbo spin echo variant of QUIXOTIC, called turboQUIXOTIC.

Graduate Student
kizildag@mit.edu

Eren has received his BS degree from Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey in 2014. Since then he has been with the MIT and currently working on medical image reconstruction in the MRI group.

Graduate Student
filiz@mit.edu

Filiz graduated from Bilkent University in 2011 with a B.S. degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering. During her undergraduate study she worked on topics including catheter construction for ablation and imaging of shear waves caused by a mechanical actuator to measure tissue elasticity. She joined the MRI Group in MIT in July 2011. She is the recipient of Merrill Lynch Fellowship. She received her S.M degree from MIT in February 2014. She is interested in RF excitation pulse design. Her current work is focused on uniform RF excitation pulse design with specific absorption rate (SAR) minimization using parallel transmission (pTx) systems at 7T and zoomed RF excitation pulse design for fetal imaging at 3T.

S.M. Thesis: ‘Local and global SAR constrained large tip angle 3D kT-points parallel transmit pulse design at 7 T’

Sayeri graduated from MIT in 2017 with an SB in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. She is currently pursuing her MEng. thesis research on improving the reconstruction quality of accelerated HASTE acquired images of the fetus.

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