The MRI group of the department of Biomedical Engineering & Physics is hiring a PhD-student to develop advanced MRI techniques that can be used to investigate skeletal muscle injuries and diseases.Adequate skeletal muscle function is essential for all daily life activities, including walking, moving your arms, swallowing etc. With age, as a consequence of neuromuscular disease, and after injury, skeletal muscles may undergo progressive loss of volume (atrophy) and function. While an active lifestyle and specific, personalized training interventions could protect against functional decline, it is often not clear how much and what type of training is safe and beneficial in individual cases.
Recently, researchers from the Amsterdam and the Leiden University Medical Centers introduced a novel dynamic 3D-MRI technology which combines structural and muscle contractility information of moving leg muscles in the confined space of the MRI scanner. This technology could serve to understand the pathophysiological process of muscle functional decline and to assess effects of an individualized training intervention.
As a PhD candidate you will refine and validate this technology, make it suitable for clinical application, and utilize it to address functional muscle decline.During the 4-year PhD project, it is the task of the candidate to:
- to reduce the scan time of the dynamic 3D MRI measurements of upper leg muscle motion and contraction and provide metrics of muscle function
- to integrate dynamic 3D-MRI with a comprehensive muscle MRI protocol that includes muscle architecture imaging and
- to apply the 3D dynamic scan protocols in a clinical setting in specific patient cohorts.