Description of Research Expertise

Dr. Walter Witschey is Associate Professor of Radiology, Associate Vice Chair of Research IT, and Director of the Advanced Cardiovascular Imaging Lab at the University of Pennsylvania. His core research focus is cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (CMR), imaging technologies and artificial intelligence. His lab uses a multidisciplinary and translational approach, integrating techniques from electrical engineering, computer science, biology and bioengineering. Our techniques include MR physics and pulse sequence development (T1ρ and quantitative susceptibility mapping / QSM) and MR spectroscopy (1H downfield MRS), non-proton imaging and spectroscopy (23Na and 31P), machine learning and computer vision, and closed-loop systems for medical imaging. His translational research interests are in myocardial ischemia and coronary artery disease, reperfusion injury, non-ischemic heart disease, congenital heart disease and metabolic imaging of the heart. He has mentored more than 25 predoctoral students, 7 graduate students, and 5 postdoctoral fellows across multiple departments of Radiology, Bioengineering and Electrical Engineering since he was appointed to the faculty at Penn.

He has led several NIH projects and is the co-PI (with Paco Bravo, MD) of NHLBI R01 HL169378 “Non-invasive imaging of reactive oxygen species in reperfusion injury myocardial infarction”, which is a longitudinal study of novel cardiac MRI and PET methods for reactive oxygen species in a large animal model of myocardial infarction and NHBLI R01 HL171709 (with Saman Nazarian, MD) of "Longitudinal association of post-infarct lipomatous metaplasia and malignant arrhythmia". He is also the PI of NCBIB P41 “Center for Advanced Metabolic Imaging in Precision Medicine” technology research & development project “Downfield spectroscopy at ultrahigh fields”. He was PI of an NHLBI grant R00 HL108157 which showed that non-gadolinium based T1ρ MRI could determine myocardial fibrosis after infarction and has led several studies to determine myocardial fibrosis in single ventricle patients using parametric mapping and T1ρ cardiovascular magnetic resonance.

Dr. Witschey is recruiting postdoctoral fellows, PhD and MS candidates in Bioengineering, Electrical Engineering, and Computer Science to work on cutting-edge AI and imaging research.

Selected Publications

Moon BF, Iyer SK, Josselyn NJ, Hwuang E, Swago S, Keeney SJ, Castillero E, Ferrari G, Pilla JJ, Gorman JH, Gorman RC, Tschabrunn CM, Shou H, Matthai W, Wehrli FW, Ferrari VA, Han Y, Litt H, Witschey WR: Magnetic susceptibility and R2* of myocardial reperfusion injury at 3T and 7T Magn Reson Med : 2021.

Josselyn N, MacLean MT, Jean C, Fuchs B, Moon BF, Hwuang E, Iyer SK, Litt H, Han Y, Kaghazchi F, Bravo PE, Witschey WR: Classification of myocardial 18F-FDG PET Uptake Patterns Using Deep Learning Radiol Artif Intell : 2021.

MacLean MT, Jehangir Q, Vujkovic M, Ko YA, Litt H, Borthakur A, Sagreiya H, Rosen M, Mankoff DA, Schnall MD, Shou H, Chirinos J, Damrauer SM, Torigian DA, Carr R, Rader DJ, Witschey WR: Quantification of abdominal fat from computed tomography using deep learning and its association with electronic health records in an academic biobank J Am Med Inform Assoc : 2021.

Contijoch F, Han Y, Kamesh Iyer S, Kellman P, Gualtieri G, Elliott MA, Berisha S, Gorman JH 3rd, Gorman RC, Pilla JJ, Witschey WRT: Closed-loop control of k-space sampling via physiologic feedback for cine MRI PLoS One : 2020.

Brianna F. Moon, Srikant Kamesh Iyer, Eileen Hwuang, Michael P. Solomon, Anya T. Hall, Rishabh Kumar, Nicholas J. Josselyn, Elizabeth M. Higbee-Dempsey, Andrew Tsourkas, Akito Imai, Keitaro Okamoto, Yoshiaki Saito, James J. Pilla, Joseph H. Gorman III, Robert C. Gorman, Cory Tschabrunn, Samuel J. Keeney, Estibaliz Castillero, Giovanni Ferrari, Steffen Jockusch, Felix W. Wehrli, Haochang Shou, Victor A. Ferrari, Yuchi Han, Avanti Gulhane, Harold Litt, William Matthai, Walter R. Witschey: Iron imaging in myocardial infarction reperfusion injury Nature Communications : 2020.

Kamesh Iyer S, Moon BF, Josselyn N, Ruparel K, Roalf D, Song JW, Guiry S, Ware JB, Kurtz RM, Chawla S, Nabavizadeh SA, Witschey WR.: Data-Driven Quantitative Susceptibility Mapping Using Loss Adaptive Dipole Inversion (LADI). J Magn Reson Imaging : 2020.

Kamesh Iyer, S, Moon, B, Hwuang, E, Han, Y, Solomon, M, Litt, H, Witschey, WR: Accelerated free-breathing 3D T1rho cardiovascular magnetic resonance using multicoil compressed sensing J. Cardiovasc. Magn. Reson 21 (1): 2019.

Hwuang, E, Vidoretta, M, Schwartz, N, Moon, BF, Kochar, K, Tisdall, MD, Detre, JA, Witschey, WRT: Assessment of uterine artery geometry and hemodynamics in human pregnancy with 4d flow MRI and its correlation with Doppler US J Magn Reson Imaging 49 (1): 59-68,2019.

Markl, M., Witschey, W.R.: The EACVI Textbook of Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance Book : 2018.

Stoffers RH, Madden M, Shahid M, Contijoch F, Solomon J, Pilla JJ, Gorman JH 3rd, Gorman RC, Witschey WR.: Assessment of myocardial injury after reperfused infarction by T1ρ cardiovascular magnetic resonance. 2017 Feb 15;19(1):17. doi: 10.1186/s12968-017-0332-z. J Cardiovasc Magn Reson. 19 (1): 17,2017.

View all publications

Academic Contact Information

Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine, South Pavilion
University of Pennsylvania
3400 Civic Center Blvd.
South Pavilion, Rm. 11-155
Philadelphia, PA 19104
Phone: 215-662-2310