Dr. Rajakumar Nagarajan (Assistant Researcher, UCLA Radiological Sciences) was recently awarded a two-year R21 grant for his project entitled “Sparsely Sampled 3D EPSI and Compressed Sensing Reconstruction of HIV Adults” by NINDS/NIH with an outstanding second percentile.
There is a need for a reliable and noninvasive brain MRI protocol combined with magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging (MRSI) to monitor neurochemical changes and functional changes using diffusion tensor imaging in HIV infection. Dr.Nagarajan's novel non-uniform under sampling echo planar imaging (EPI) based MRSI technique described in this proposal may lead to a powerful neurochemical tool to better understand the role of CNS involvement in HIV pathology.
This project will be in collaboration with Dr. Eric Daar at Harbor-UCLA HIV clinic, a pioneer in HIV medicine. Dr.Nagarajan is working with Dr. Albert Thomas, Director of MR Spectroscopy at UCLA Radiology and his primary focus is on the development of multi-dimensional magnetic resonance (MR) spectroscopic techniques and subsequent clinical implementation and evaluation in Prostate cancer, HIV, and Hepatitis C.
