Who is citing CIEL?

 I will occasionally feature recent citations to the papers published in the past by the CIEL team. Today's posting surveys the papers that cite Dr. Yoo's habenula paper (Scientific Reports, Nov 9th,. 2020). As of today, Google Scholar lists 5 entries that cited this work, all from outside CIEL. One is a preprint that is under review in Scientific Reports, and the others are peer-reviewed journal publications. Interestingly, one of them is an Editorial in J. Neuroradiology, an official journal of the French Society of Neuroradiology (SFNR). Overall, the citations were made with significant and specific contexts. Barely two years after the publication, this work seems to receive substantial recognition from the scientific community. Full lists and links can be found in Google Scholar.

1. Wang 2022, Quant Imaging Med Surg “Alterations in brain iron deposition with progression of late-life depression measured by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-based quantitative susceptibility mapping”: This is a human QSM study where the habenula was included in the study design. Yoo et al., appears as ref. 88 (out of 89), in the discussion section, where tissue heterogeneity is mentioned as a source of limitation in their study.

2. Sarkar 2023, Spectroscopy Letters (not free) “Soft X-ray and susceptibility based magnetic resonance imaging to map iron distribution in apples: initial results to model iron storage in water-deficient or dehydrated biological tissue”: 

In this article, Yoo et al., is the 6th out of 35 references. Full text is behind a paywall, but judging from the reference list available from “researchgate.net”, it may have been cited as an example of how susceptibility biomarkers are used in MRI research.

3. Chen 2022, Front Neurosci “Chronic social defeat stress caused region-specific oligodendrogenesis impairment in adolescent mice”: Here Yoo et al., is cited prominently at the beginning of a paragraph in the discussion section introducing the anatomy and function of the habenula.

4. Milotta 2022 (under review in Scientific Reports) “In vivo multi-parameter mapping of the habenula using MRI”: Yoo et al. is #20 out of 43 references. In addition, the CIEL team’s 2017 ISMRM abstract on habenula QSM (with Dr. Anup Bidesi!) is also cited, as #21. The context of citation is limited prior research on habenula QSM. Yoo et al. was cited at least twice, and the second citation accompanied detailed mention of its research outcome (need for high resolution, and Hb susceptibility gradient).

5. Pyatigorskaya 2021, J Neuroradiol. (Editorial) “QSM as a new powerful tool for clinical practice in neuroimaging”: This is the first to cite Yoo et al., and it did so in an Editorial. Interestingly, it also cited Bulumulla et al (2012, CMR-B), where I was the second author. Yoo et al., is #11 out of 29. The citation was used to highlight how QSM allows better habenula visualization in MRI, and thus can help DBS.

GE Research, Magnus, and NYTimes

 A first-ever, "Neuroscience conference" was held at the GRC Niskayuna campus on Dec 6-7. Dr. Tom Foo organized the whole thing, with many well-known (and busy) scientists from the academia attending the multi-day event in person. Alan Koretsky and Peter Bandettini were two of the invited neuro-experts who had in fact been involved in a Korean neuroscience center evaluation a few years ago. Tommy Vaughan was another big-name person who I had met while working in Korea. This conference was spurred by our MAGNUS gradient coil, which had just reached the record power for any head-only gradient coil at 3T the week before. Coincidentally and serendipitously, on the same day (Dec 6) GE had put out a full-page NY Time advertisement with a brain image obtained from MAGNUS (shown above to the left), as part of an unprecedented full-issue takeover of all the printed advertisement space for the day. With MAGNUS, we may be onto something.

icMRI 2022 and ISMRM 2023

 This year's official conference of KSMRM, icMRI 2022, was held in Seoul on Nov 4-5. I presented an invited talk via pre-recorded video, which was the first talk in an MR Engineering session. The talk, 30 min in all, was about dimensional analysis in gradient design based on my recent MRM publication with Matt Bernstein. The organizers posted the talk on-line including moderator introduction and closing remarks for 30 days, from which I was able to capture a few screenshots as shown above. Many thanks to Profs. Ahn Chang-Beom and Moon Chi-Woong for running the session!

Separately, the ISMRM abstract deadline was Nov. 11, and I submitted 3 first-authored works on magnetic damping, eddy current heating, and vector gradient field measurement. All involved a set of analytical equations, which have become my favorite ingredients in recent publications. A big change for the upcoming ISMRM meeting is that oral presentation time is reduced to 6 min, from 12 min. This will allow more abstracts to be selected for an oral, democratizing the conference in general.

DIANA fMRI in the media

A flurry of media articles appeared on-line following the official publication of the DIANA fMRI paper in Science. The main article and the accompanying commentary are off-limits for general public, subject to subscription requirement, but the following news articles are free for everyone to read:

The Scientist Magazine (UK): New MRI Technique Tracks Brain Activity at Millisecond Timescales.

"incredibly convincing", "super exciting"

STAT news (US): Brain Imaging Method Might Overcome Limitations of MRI Scans

"first believable in vivo neuronal current MRI images I've seen"

Nature news (UK): Faster MRI Scan Captures Brain Activity in Mice

"faster than ever before"

as well as one in a Korean mainstream newspaper. Both the Scientist magazine and STAT news reported a fairly balanced story, while the layman's explanation in Nature news was a bit too sketchy and misleading on how k-space line-scan works. As all the articles touched upon, the race for the next great milestone, reproduction of the research, has now started!

Additional articles:

Chinese news article (can be translated into English by many browsers with a single click)

Taiwan Posts in English 

French article in Le Monde (Oct 19)

Dong-a science (in Korean) (Nov 05)

In the news again

GE Global Research is soon to change its name (yet unknown) and structure following the separation of the company into three independent businesses. The official announcement was made in mid September, and was covered in the media, (times union article), as well as in the public blog posted here. The new structure can be summarized by the key words: three co-located research centers, and will preserve much of the existing functions, people, and funding sources (mostly government). It remains to be seen how this change will affect the contents and scope of the Center's research in the coming years in the field of MRI.

Awesome August

August 2022 was highly productive and filled with good news in the world of CIEL friends. The news stories are summarized below to wrap up this remarkable month.

(1) Prof. JY Park's DIANA paper was finally accepted by the journal Science. The acceptance letter was issued just days after submission of the 2nd revision, without additional peer review that was widely anticipated. This pleasant surprise indicates that the editor was probably personally supportive and in favor of the paper, and trusted the authors based on progress made in the first round of revision. The long and tireless efforts by Prof. Park and his Vietnamese PhD student Phan Tan Toi, the first author, that made this a reality cannot be over-praised. They have overcome an enormous technical as well as political hurdles in producing data for this work, the latter coming from a jealous senior academic who had actively hindered progress and bad-mouthed the team. Now it is only matter of time that the exciting new discovery, that time-shuffled MRI can track neuronal activities in vivo, will make a big splash in the broad MRI and biology communities.

(2) Dr. Seulki Yoo, the first CIEL graduate student at SKKU, was granted a Korean government's new PhD research funding for the next 2 years. This was done even before she officially graduated, which technically happened on 8/25. This exciting early accomplishment will certainly go a long way to jump start her academic career, and makes her friends and mentors feel proud of her.

(3) Three CIEL students graduated from the graduate school of SKKU. Apart from Dr. Yoo mentioned above, Mr. Hyeong-Seop Kim and Mr. Byung-Pan Song got their Master's degree this month. Both of them have published multiple first-authored and co-authored papers during their time as graduate students in SKKU. They have positively impacted people around them through their friendly manners, positive attitudes, and their skills in hands-on electrical work in the lab.

Latest citation to Yoo et al., the head-tilting paper

A couple of authors from the French Neurospin team -- known for their 20-year efforts on 11.7T brain MRI -- recently published in MAGMA: official journal of ESMRMB, a full-length article on physical limits of brain B0 shimming. The title is "Physical limits to human brain B0 shimming with spherical harmonics, engineering implications thereof" and the full text is freely available here. An interesting, eye-catching sentence is "We establish a ~13Hz inhomogeneity hard shim limit at 7T for whole brain SH (spherical harmonic) shimming, ... only be attained at shimming degree higher than 90."

Since the B0 inhomogeneity is generated largely by the surface current in the brain itself, it is well-known that external shim current cannot completely cancel such fields. These authors tested this theoretical limit based on experimental B0 map data from 100 subjects. 

In terms of citation, the paper prominently cited the SKKU CIEL group's 2020 paper on head-tilted imaging by Yoo et al., dedicating a full sentence which mentioned the latter as an example of non-conventional way of pre-frontal cortex shimming.

MAGMA had another article on brain B0 shimming in the same batch of (total 19) articles called topical collection: Basic Science - Engineering. In this other paper, the authors (half of whom were apparently from the Boston team promoting combined shim + RF array) basically said that a combined local shim + RF phased array is too complicated, and a simpler 8 channel shim array can already do very well in 7T brain shimming. B0 shimming lives on!