Marilyn E. Noz, PhD

The primary research focus is the integration of functional and anatomical (multi-modality) imaging into clinical practice. Image registration is used across multiple images, initially 2D, now 3D. This work began with rest/stress Thallium images of the heart and was quickly followed by fusion of brain PET/CT for schizophrenia/senile dementia/.... These techniques proved to very successful in the both head and the rest of the body (particularly the thorax and abdomen where rigid transformations do not work). This method has been evaluated in comparison with others via a NIH funded multi-center trial (J. West, et al. Comparison and Evaluation of Retrospective Intermodality Brain Image Registration Techniques. JCAT 21(4):554-566, 1997). It has found clinical use in SPECT/PET/CT/MRI (with Dr. J. Jaeger, et al. in the NYU-Brookhaven collaboration), cranial facial reconstruction (together with Dr. Court Cutting), cancer detection and bio-distribution/radioimmuniotherapy dosimetry (with Dr. E. Kramer and others), in radiation therapy (with Dr. K. DeWyngaert and Prof. A. Brahme {Karolinska}), and recently in orthopedic surgery (with Drs. H. and L. Olivecrona {Karolinska}).

In order to provide both clinicians and researchers with image data and image processing, this work has, over the last 30 years, entailed the development of a local area network connecting all the major tomographic image source machines at NYU, image format translation software, workstation based image processing, and a picture archiving and communication system for nuclear medicine. These are all routinely used by clinicians and imaging researchers throughout the medical center. Although the software developed in this research effort is in routine clinical use new functionality continues to be added as techniques transition from research to clinical use; currently I have integrated stereo into this software and am integrating force feedback using low cost haptic devices.

Since 1971, collaboration with Prof. Y. S. Kim of the University of Maryland in elementary particle physics has resulted in three books and more than forty journal publications.