Biography
My career has been devoted to quantitative imaging of the lung. During my training I was involved in histological analysis of the lung microstructure. I then helped develop and validate techniques for the analysis of computed tomography scans of the lung in the normal, fibrotic and emphysematous lung. Since my PhD I have been involved in validating measurements of airways on computed tomography and applying all of these new non-invasive imaging techniques to large cohorts. Our research has shown that in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease the contribution of airway remodeling and emphysematous destruction can be separated using imaging and that these two “phenotypes” of disease are under separate genetic control. We have also measured changes in lung volume following intervention with an intra-bronchial valve. My laboratory has been the central imaging facility for the “Evaluation of COPD Longitudinally to Identify Predictive Surrogate Endpoints (ECLIPSE)” study which is an international longitudinal analysis of COPD following 2600 subjects for three years. More recently my laboratory has been involved in the development of novel imaging techniques such as hyperpolarized noble gas magnetic resonance imaging and the bronchoscopic technique optical coherence tomography. I am currently an Associate Professor of Radiology at the University of British Columbia and Vancouver General Hospital as well as a Principal Investigator at the UBC James Hogg Research Centre at the Institute for Heart + Lung Health at St Paul’s Hospital. I work in collaboration with Drs Peter Paré, James Hogg, Don Sin, at UBC to study lung structure and how that relates to lung function and disease. I also collaborate with with Drs Frank Sciurba and Ken Leader at the University of Pittsburgh to validate methods to phenotype subjects with COPD. I am also actively studying a group of smoking subjects that are receiving regular CT scans as part of a BC Cancer Agency program headed by Dr Stephen Lam, Dr Annette McWilliams and Dr John Mayo to follow their lung health and to develop novel imaging techniques to study the development of lung disease. Collaborations are also in place with Dr Farrah Kheradmand at the Baylor College of Medicine to study the innate and adaptive immune response in the pathogenesis of COPD and Professor Wisia Wedzicha at the Royal Free and University College in London (UK) to study exacerbations in COPD. It is my goal to understand the anatomy of the lung at the microscopic and macroscopic level. I believe that the future of therapeutic interventions for chronic lung disease lies in understanding the processes that drive the remodeling of the lung architecture.
