President’s Lecture Series: Medical imaging – past, present, and future
People have spent centuries trying to understand the workings of the human body, said Anke Henning, Ph.D., Director of UT Southwestern’s Advanced Imaging Research Center (AIRC). The ancient Greeks used dissection to study anatomy. More than 2,000 years later, German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen discovered X-rays in 1895, opening a window for scientists to peer inside at bones.
During the last century, medical imaging underwent warp-speed development as complementary methods such as CT, MRI, PET, and ultrasound emerged, offering detailed information about patients in real time. Hence, “this very ancient dream of trying to look deep into the body” became reality, said Dr. Henning, also Professor of Radiology.
Her own work focuses on MRI, which allows a detailed view of the anatomy and function of the living human body for diagnostic use.
On April 27, as part of the President’s Lecture Series, Dr. Henning will follow the history of imaging the human body, discuss the current state of this field, and provide a glimpse of what this technology in the future may look like. The 4 p.m. lecture, titled “Seeing Inside the Human Body: An Ancient Dream,” will be presented in the Tom and Lula Gooch Auditorium on South Campus.
Opened in 2005, the AIRC supports the work of more than 120 Principal Investigators across the UTSW campus and in the North Texas research community. AIRC researchers develop innovative imaging technology to push the boundaries of biomedical imaging in spatial and temporal resolution, functional and metabolic specificity, and speed and spatial coverage, Dr. Henning explained. In collaboration with more than 150 clinical and basic science researchers, these novel technologies are evaluated, refined, and finally translated into diagnostic, preclinical, clinical, and basic science research.
Dr. Henning came to UT Southwestern in 2019 after working at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Germany. She obtained a master’s degree in physics from the Technical University of Chemnitz in that same country. Her Ph.D. in biomedical engineering is from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich – also known as Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule, or ETH.
In Europe, Dr. Henning focused on using ultra high-field MRI to probe metabolism in the human brain and in heart and muscle.
She was the first to enable high-resolution imaging of 12 brain metabolites. Her research group also demonstrated that the rate of human brain energy metabolism can be easily quantified in people who are given a drink of sugar solution as a tracer.
Dr. Henning collaborated with psychiatrists, neurologists, and cardiologists who applied her technology to study the metabolism of the human brain, spinal cord, and heart. Differences seen in the brains of patients with depression, including in their brain energy metabolism and in the ratio of the inhibitory and excitatory neurotransmitters GABA and of glutamate, might one day be used to predict which treatments would be more successful for specific patients, she said. Her group also demonstrated that healthy-looking spinal cord segments in spinal cord injury patients have pronounced metabolic abnormalities that predict how well the patients will recover. Her research also revealed that patients with “broken heart syndrome” (takotsubo cardiomyopathy) suffer from acute and sustained impairment of heart energy metabolism.
At UT Southwestern, Dr. Henning aims to develop a better understanding of an aggressive, incurable type of brain cancer. She is also supporting a study evaluating inborn errors of metabolism tied to enzyme under- or over-expression that appear linked to neurological symptoms in children.
Since joining UTSW, one of Dr. Henning’s priorities has been to update equipment in the AIRC. The Center currently has three 3 Tesla (3T) MRI scanners and one 7T MRI scanner. (Tesla is a measure of magnetic strength.) The 7T scanner was among a handful in the world for human research when it was installed in 2007 and is now the first to be upgraded to the latest imaging technology.
In May, a preclinical MRI Core Facility with novel 3T, 7T, and 9.4T magnets will reopen. In addition, a hyperpolarizer and a PET insert will allow researchers to track specific molecules within the body.
One day, Dr. Henning hopes to acquire a 10.5T human MRI scanner at UT Southwestern to amplify the possibilities of human research. Such a machine would enable imaging of the human brain at micrometer resolution and metabolic MRI at the quality of 1.5T clinical anatomical MRI. Myocardial defects and inflammation of heart muscle could also be better investigated, she said, as the newest machines allow scientists like her to fulfill their dreams of finally, truly seeing inside.