Bill Rooney

Research Focus: Research in Rooney's group is focused on the development and application of quantitative magnetic resonance techniques to characterize tissue structure and function. A major thrust of our work aims to phenotype brain blood vessels using dynamic MRI acquisitions combined with pharmaco- kinetic modeling.  We apply these techniques to learn how brain blood vessels change in disease processes such as multiple sclerosis, Alzheimers, and brain tumors.  Another area of interest is the investigation of cellular metabolism and its relationship to tissue degeneration.  We are using ³¹P and ¹H magnetic resonance spectroscopic techniques to investigate the relationship between defects in energy metabolism and tissue loss.  The goals of these research projects are to expand fundamental understanding of disease pathophysiology and to improve our ability to diagnose disease and assess therapy.
 

Biography: Bill Rooney earned his Ph.D. from the Department of Chemistry at the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1990.  After a brief stint as a Research Scientist in industry, he pursued an NIH NRSA fellowship in neuroimaging at the Department of Radiology/University of California San Francisco which he completed in 1993. Dr. Rooney was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Radiology/UCSF through 1997.  From 1997-2005 Rooney was a faculty member in the Chemistry Department of Brookhaven National Laboratory, and Spokesperson for the BNL's High-Field MRI Laboratory between 2003-2005. Rooney joined the Advanced Imaging Research Center of Oregon Health and Science University in 2005, where he holds his primary appointment as Senior Scientist. Dr. Rooney also is a member of OHSU graduate faculty in Neuroscience.

Key Publications:

W.D. Rooney, G. Johnson, X. Li, E.R. Cohen, S-G Kim, K. Ugurbil, C.S. Springer. The Magnetic Field and Tissue Dependences of Human Brain 1H2O Longitudinal Relaxation In Vivo. Magn. Reson. Med. 57:308-318 (2007).

X. Li, W.D. Rooney, C.S. Springer. A Unified MRI Pharmacokinetic Theory: Intravascular and Extravascular Contrast Reagents. Magn. Reson. Med. 54:1351-1359 (2005).

W.D. Rooney, R.G. Miller, N. Schuff, D. Gelinas, A.A. Maudsley, and M.W. Weiner. Decreased N-acetylaspartate in motor cortex and corticospinal tract in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Neurology 50:1800-1805. (1998).

E. A. Neuwelt,  B. E. Hamilton, C. Varallyay, W. Rooney, R. Edelman, P. M. Jacobs, S. Watnick. Ultra Small Superparamagnetic Iron Oxides: A alternative class of MRI contrast agents for patients at risk for Nephrogenic Systemic Fibrosis (NSF). Kidney International, 75:465-474 (2009)

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