October 27th (9:00 a.m. MDT)

Title: Technical Development, Optimization, and Clinical Implementation of Quantitative Magnetic Resonance Imaging Methods for Radiation Oncology

Summary: Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has gradually grown more important in the field of radiation oncology. This paradigm shift has grown from initial experiments with MRI of cancerous lesions in the early 1970s, to the integration of MRI images for radiation therapy treatment planning (i.e., MRI-Simulation) in the early 1980s, to the combined MRI linear accelerator (MR-Linac) becoming commercially available in 2018 which can simultaneously image a tumor and treat it with radiation. However, due to its novelty in radiation oncology, its full potential for the integration of quantitative MRI-based biomarkers has yet to be fully realized. Therefore, this talk will provide a framework for this integration from the initial technical developments, to the subsequent optimization, to the ultimate clinical implementation in the radiation oncology workflow. This work will be presented in three distinct aims: 1) the technical development of quantitative MRI techniques in radiation oncology, 2) the technical optimization of these techniques for site-specific applications, and 3) their clinical implementation and potential use cases. Several techniques will be explored for quantitative T1, T2, PD, R2*, proton density fat fraction (PDFF), and triglyceride composition mapping. Most of the techniques presented will acquire multiple of these quantitative parameters simultaneously due to the unique time constraints in radiation oncology, especially on the integrated MR-Linac.

Speaker Bio: Lucas McCullum completed his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and B.A. in Applied Mathematics at The University of Maryland – Baltimore County in 2019. Following this, he worked as a research software engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Laboratory for Computational Physiology under the advisership of Dr. Roger Mark M.D., Ph.D. developing open-source tools and databases for health informatics. He then worked as a research assistant at Massachusetts General Hospital in the laboratory of Dr. Harald Paganetti Ph.D. and Dr. Clemens Grassberger Ph.D. focusing on computational simulations of lymphocyte depletion during radiation therapy. In 2022, he started his Ph.D. in Medical Physics at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences under the advisership of Dr. Clifton D. Fuller M.D., Ph.D. where he developed and clinically implemented quantitative magnetic resonance imaging techniques in the radiation oncology department and successfully defended his Ph.D. in 2026. He is currently a medical physics resident in diagnostic imaging and nuclear medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

Format: One hour call – Presentation followed by Q&A

For registration, please reach out to CaliberMRI.