A special welcome to our 2022 guest editor

Martin John Graves, PhD

Professor of MR Physics, University of Cambridge Honorary Consultant Clinical Scientist, Cambridge University Hospitals, United Kingdom

The Spring 2022 SIGNA™ Pulse of MR Editorial Board is pleased to announce Martin John Graves, PhD, Professor of MR Physics, University of Cambridge and Honorary Consultant Clinical Scientist, Cambridge University Hospitals, United Kingdom (UK), as its 2022 Guest Editor. Professor Graves brings an extensive knowledge of MR along with a rich history in MR dating back to 1984 as a probationary basic grade physicist at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London, which had one of the first UK commercial MR scanners, an 800 G (0.08 T) vertical field system, produced by M & D Technology in Aberdeen, Scotland.

Professor Graves calls his interest in MR a “simple case of magnetic attraction.” It was May 1982 when he read in the pages of Scientific American an article on NMR imaging by Ian Pykett, who at the time was a research student in the late Professor Sir Peter Mansfield’s group in Nottingham. From St. Bartholomew’s Hospital to leading the MR physics team at Cambridge, Professor Graves has helped chart the course for today’s modern MR technology. He has collaborated with GE Healthcare and evaluated the early work in spiral MR with Kevin King, segmented k-space cardiac cine imaging with Tom Foo, examined Fourier velocity encoded imaging with Chris Hardy, engaged with Fraser Robb on coil design and development and most recently, evaluated the stunning image quality now enabled by AIR™ Recon DL.

He is the co-author of the textbook MRI, From Picture to Proton, and together with Professor Gareth Barker at King’s College London, has taught the European EPIC programming course for 13 years before COVID-19 halted it. Professor Graves looks forward to restarting the course in the near future.

Reflecting on his illustrious career in MR physics, Professor Graves says, “I am most proud of the work that we performed in Cambridge developing high-resolution imaging of carotid atheroma, including studies using ultra-small paramagnetic iron oxide (USPIO) nanoparticles as a marker for plaque inflammation. The initial work involved coil development, pulse sequence programming and painstaking measurements of signal intensity changes.”

Yet, it is the collaboration with fellow scientists, engineers and GE team members that he recalls most fondly. And it is a key reason why he is excited to be a part of SIGNA™ Pulse of MR in 2022.

Looking forward, Professor Graves sees a bright future for artificial intelligence (AI) in MR and anticipates broader adoption over the next five years.

“We have already seen the power of deep learning applied to automatic scan plane prescription and image reconstruction algorithms that can improve SNR whilst simultaneously improving spatial resolution and reducing artifacts,” he says. “We can expect that the next few years we will see AI algorithms reduce exam times and improve image quality through intelligent data acquisition strategies. These algorithms will effectively ’drive’ the scanner through patient-specific protocol optimization whilst ensuring consistent image quality by continually learning those sometimes-intangible features that make certain exams clinically outstanding.”

Please join us in welcoming Professor Graves as the 2022 SIGNA™ Pulse of MR Guest Editor.