Inventor Profiles

Research area As the Chief of Gastrointestinal Imaging, Dr. Pickhardt’s clinical and research interests are broad, including CT colonography and colorectal cancer screening, as well as machine learning/artificial intelligence, oncologic imaging and opportunistic CT screening.

• Faculty page
• Patents, publications and more
• 2024 WARF Innovation Award Nomination

What excites you about your work? 

“Opportunistic screening is when you take additional imaging data already present on CT imaging tests but generally unused, and then look at opportunities to leverage this information for the good of patient care. We now have automated CT tools to measure fat, muscle, bone and organ volumes, which can be used to screen for metabolic syndrome, diabetes, heart disease and osteoporosis. For example, a CT scan is the best test we have to assess bone mineral density, yet we typically discard this information in routine practice. We can also estimate a patient’s biological age from their CT scan, which is the area of research that fascinates me the most right now.”

What do you hope to achieve? 

“It’s quite possible that this additional CT information is so valuable that we could start thinking about utilizing it for virtual physical exams. You might not need all those lab tests that are currently in use. However, the next clinical step is implementation of these automated measurement on every scan in real-time. We need to engage referring physicians and patients in such a way that this provides a clear net benefit, so we can work smarter, not harder. In addition, we will need to embark on prospective studies to assess the impact of harnessing this CT data. There’s so much to explore!”

Dr. Pickhardt’s leadership in virtual colonoscopy and opportunistic screening is aiding early and efficient disease diagnosis. We are thrilled to continue bringing these enhanced imaging tools to market and expand their impact.

– Jeanine Burmania, WARF, Senior Director, IP and Licensing