Michael Weiner

Research Interests

Development & utilization of magnetic resonance spectroscopy to investigate metabolism in intact animals & human patients.

Research Summary

Our laboratory is involved in developing new magnetic resonance imaging and magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging technique, and using these techniques for animal and clinical research on human diseases. He focus on
the neurodegenerative diseases of: Alzheimer's disease, epilepsy, amyotropic lateral sclerosis, AIDs, multiple sclerosis, schizophrenia, alcoholism, substance abuse.

Furthermore, with Dr Andrew Maudsley we have started a new, very exciting project developing hardware and software to obtain increased dynamic range for NMR receiver systems, with application to ongoing clinical studies using spectroscopic imaging of proton metabolites in human brain. Instrumentation development will include the construction of new RF electronics with a real-time microprocessor control system. Software development will include the development of the real-time control, interprocess communication using TCP/IP, and additional data processing software necessary for MR spectroscopy. Research topics include the analysis of noise sources in MRI, including effects of instrumental instabilities and subject motion, and the development of methods to correct for those noise sources. Experimental studies will be required to evaluate the performance of the methods developed using a whole-body MRI, and a research MRI/MRS spectrometer system. Additional studies will examine the potential clinical applications of the methods developed.

Selected Publications

Schuff, N., Amend, D., Ezekiel, F., Steinman, S.K., Tanabe, J., Norman, D., Jagust, W., Kramer, J.H., Mastrianni, J.A., Fein, G., and Weiner, M.W.: Changes of hippocampal n-acetyl aspartate and volume in Alzheimer's disease: A proton MR spectroscopic imaging and MRI study. Neurology 49:1513-21, 1997.

Hugg, J.W., Maudsley, A.A., Weiner, M.W., and Matson, G.B.: Comparison of k-space sampling schemes for multidimensional MR spectroscopic imaging. Magnetic Resonance in Medicine 36:469-473, 1996.

Maudsley, A.A., Wu, Z., Meyerhoff, D.J., and Weiner, M.W.: Automated processing for proton spectroscopic imaging using water reference deconvolution. Magnetic Resonance in Medicine 31:589-595, 1994.

Maudsley, A.A., Matson, G.B., Hugg, J.W., and Weiner, M.W.: Reduced phase encoding in spectroscopic imaging. Magnetic Resonance in Medicine 31:645-651, 1994.

Haupt C. I., Schuff N., Weiner M. W. and Maudsley A. A. Removal of lipid artifacts in 1H spectroscopic imaging by data extrapolation. Magn. Reson. Med. 35: 678-687, 1996.

C.I. Haupt, A.P. Kiefer, A.A. Maudsley. In-plane motion correction for MR spectroscopic imaging. Magn. Reson. Med. 39: 749-753, 1998.