Junzhong Xu, PhD

Assistant Professor
Radiology and Radiological Sciences

Interests

My primary research interest is to develop, validate and evaluate cutting-the-edge diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging methods e.g. quantitative temporal diffusion spectroscopy (qTDS) as a non-invasive surrogate imaging biomarker to assess tumor early therapeutic response at an early stage of treatment. I am also interested in other MR molecular imaging methods, such as quantitative magnetization transfer (qMT) and chemical exchange saturation transfer (CEST) to comprehensively investigate tumor microenvironments.

Projects

I am currently involved in a number of projects focused on advancing, optimizing, and validating advanced quantitative MRI methods for monitoring the response of tumors to treatment. The specific projects include 1) monitoring tumor response to chemo- and radiotherapy with diffusion, qMT and CEST methods; 2) investigating sensitivity and specificity of diffusion, qMT and CEST MRI methods on specific biological tissue pathophysiological status with mathematical modeling, computing simulation, ex vivo and in vivo models.