Prof. dr. Peter Luijten is professor in Functional Medical Imaging at the Imaging Division and the Image Sciences Institute.
Could you introduce yourself?
Peter Luijten: “After my study in physical chemistry I conducted my PhD research in Amsterdam and San Diego. Then I joined Philips Medical, currently known as Philips Health Care, and found myself on the very forefront of clinical magnetic resonance imaging and spectroscopy research. The technology was still very far from the regular medical applications as we know them today. At the time we were really pioneering a new technology.”
What’s your research about?
“It is my job to get the newly established 7 Tesla MR scanner up and running and to translate this technology in new clinical applications that will make a difference. It’s one of the strongest MR scanner currently available in the world, there’s only one other machine in the Netherlands. Apart from the technological challenges, it is an organizational tour de force. The project involves many partners and my task is to establish a smooth cooperation. It’s pretty much what I have been doing at Philips. As a company you can’t just develop new technology on your own, you have to be in touch with the end-users, in this case, medical scientists. So part of my job is coaxing physicists and medical scientists to work together; and to reconcile industrial and medical interests.”
What are you proud of?
“The notion might seem difficult to grasp, but when I was involved in pioneering research into magnetic resonance technology, it wasn’t even hot. It took quite a while before everybody realized the gigantic potential of the technology. A completely safe, non-invasive way to visualize the inner details of the human body. Today, of course, you can’t imagine a hospital without one or more MR scanners. And the technology is improving still. It is safe to say we will only find more use of MR scanners in the future.”
Why the UMC Utrecht?
“The absence of turf battles between different medical disciplines within the UMC Utrecht I find refreshing. Within my own division radiologists, radiotherapists and nuclear medicine physicians and physicist are working side by side on multiple projects. Even more so, the collaboration between this division and the neuroscientists is a good example of a truly interdisciplinary approach. During my frequent visits to Unites States hospitals I often encountered situations in which different specialists simply wouldn’t cooperate. Here barriers between disciplines – they do exist – are relatively easily brought down. Also, in the UMC Utrecht the focus of our research lies in imaging that supports image guided minimal invasive therapies. One might expect the more traditionalist minded disciplines to oppose such a strategy. But that’s definitely not the the case, there’s a positive mindset all across the hospital.”
Future plans? “We’re working very hard to make the 7 Tesla MR scanner available for clinical use. We will be looking into small vessel disease, blood vessel abnormalities in the brain. Together with the Free University of Amsterdam we will investigate multiple sclerosis. Another research line is more technologically oriented. We try and develop the tools to make use of the 7T scanner in breast cancer and prostate cancer diagnosis. But we have a long way to go.”