Radiology set to recruit and support top talent

Grist, now a diagnostic radiologist with the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, also had the luck of being in the right place at the right time. As an undergraduate biomedical engineering major at Marquette University in 1978, Grist took an extracurricular job with GE Medical Systems in Milwaukee. This marked the beginning of a decades-long partnership that would lead to significant breakthroughs in MRI technology at UW–Madison.

“I feel so fortunate to have been at these great places at a wonderful time of development of a whole new technology,” Grist said.

GE HealthCare Foundation has given $3 million for the creation of a UW professorship within the Department of Radiology. The Thomas Grist, MD/GE HealthCare Foundation Distinguished Chair in Radiology Research will be awarded to the department’s incoming vice chair of research and will support continued growth and innovation in the field. The initial $600,000 award will “further Dr. Grist’s legacy of innovation in clinical care, imaging research and education,” according to Victoria Glazar, managing director of the GE HealthCare Foundation.

“It is incredibly gratifying that Tom’s legacy is being honored in this way,” said Dr. Scott Reeder, chair of the Department of Radiology. “We intend to recruit a vice chair of research sometime in the next year, and this professorship will provide sustained resources for that individual, not only to support their own research but also to further the department’s mission. This is a wonderful way to bring top talent to the university.”

When Grist joined UW in 1991, MRI techniques were still evolving. Grist was excited to learn that UW already owned one of GE HealthCare’s MRI machines. From the outset, he helped strengthen and nurture the university’s burgeoning partnership with the company, and the relationship would eventually lead to breakthrough innovations and collaborations between GE HealthCare engineers and UW–Madison radiologists and medical physicists in the areas of MRI and CT imaging. Today, GE HealthCare’s MRI and CT scanners are shipped worldwide with protocols and software developed at UW–Madison, thanks largely to the enduring partnership fostered by Grist.

Shortly after he arrived at UW, Grist became one of the co-inventors, along with UW–Madison medical physicist Charles “Chuck” Mistretta, PhD, of a technique called Time-Resolved MR Angiography (TRICKS), which changed the way doctors perform diagnostic MR angiography — a procedure that uses images of blood vessels to examine the vascular system. The opportunity to work on this helped draw Grist to UW.

“Chuck and I thought we could have fun developing angiography in new ways with GE,” he said. “We wanted to study blood vessels with MRI methods that did not involve placement of a catheter in the artery, or X-rays. TRICKS is a non-invasive way to create three-dimensional images of the arteries.”

GE HealthCare adopted the application for its machines, and in the process, Grist said, the university researchers and the GE engineers “collectively realized the power of working together, enhancing our ability to identify and meet patient needs, and validate that these new approaches worked.”

Many more innovations followed, some in the form of clinical applications for GE HealthCare’s MRI and CT scanners, and others in the form of protocols — detailed instructions for doctors and technologists on how to use the machines, from minimizing radiation levels to maintaining high image quality.

Medical physicists, radiologists and GE engineers intersect in the Imaging Sciences program at the Wisconsin Institutes for Medical Research facility, which was built in part with a major donation from GE HealthCare.

“That intersection is where the innovation happens,” said Grist, who has a joint appointment with the departments of Radiology and Medical Physics and stressed the importance of medical physics researchers in the collaborative partnership with GE HealthCare.

“This relationship is unique in terms of breadth and depth,” he said.

Dr. Robert N. Golden, dean of the School of Medicine and Public Health, describes it as “one of the best examples in the country, and maybe the world” of a mutually beneficial, collaborative relationship between a public university and a corporate partner.

“We have come together to advance the public good by improving health, health care and health care delivery, all based on the shared platform of cutting-edge science,” Golden said.

Reeder, who held the vice chair of research position before succeeding Grist as department chair earlier this year, described a robust period of growth in the radiology department, with 157 current faculty and more than two dozen searches underway for new clinical and research positions. He cited the advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) and theranostics, which leverages molecular targeting agents for both imaging and therapeutic uses, as examples of developments that boost radiology’s relevance and importance.

“This is a ‘golden era’ for radiology,” he said. “We are proud to be central to pretty much everything in medicine.”