Professor of Radiology and Biomedical Engineering
Biomedical imaging including magnetic resonance, PET, SPECT, and biomagnetic imaging (primary Radiology).
Office: DRB 163
Phone: (213) 740-0837
Fax: (213) 740-0343
Email:
msingh@usc.edu
Homepage:
http://nmr.usc.edu
Dr. Singh is associated with the
Alfred E. Mann Institute for Biomedical Engineering (AMI-USC) and
Center for Neural Engineering (CNE) labs.
Background
After receiving his Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1971, Manbir Singh joined the Laboratory of Nuclear Medicine and Radiation Biology at UCLA as a postdoctoral scholar in Biomedical Imaging. While at UCLA, Dr. Singh was a key member of an inter- disciplinary team which designed and implemented the first 64-detector ring positron emission tomography (PET) system. From these data derived from the PET system, in vivo functional images are reconstructed using computed tomographic techniques.
Research
In 1976, Dr. Singh received a Visiting Scientist Award from the American Heart Association to pursue research in nuclear medicine and dynamic X-ray computed tomography for imaging the heart at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Dr. Singh was a part of an interdisciplinary team which developed the Dynamic Spatial Reconstructor (DSR), a revolutionary CT scanner for three-dimensional imaging and visualization of the beating heart. Dr. Singh pioneered the use of single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) using a rotating scintillation camera to detect and quantify acute myocardial infarctions in three dimensions, and he was one of the first investigators to demonstrate the synergism of X-ray CT and nuclear medicine SPECT imaging in detecting and visualizing both anatomical and functional aspects of the heart.
Dr. Singh joined the Medical Imaging Science Group within the Department of Radiology at USC in 1977 and became an Associate Professor in 1983. In 1987, he received a joint appointment as Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering, and in 1995, he became a Professor of Radiology and Biomedical Engineering. His research interests have spanned the general area of biomedical imaging, including development of novel imaging instrumentation and techniques, image reconstruction algorithms, radiation detectors, image processing for medical and defense applications, neuromagnetic imaging, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) imaging, and NMR spectroscopy.
Dr. Singh proposed a new approach to nuclear medical imaging in 1977, based on electronically collimating emitted gamma rays using a sequential interaction with a germanium detector and an uncollimated scintillation camera. From 1980 to 1990, he received continuous funding from the National Cancer Institute to develop a prototype. He has also devised a new imaging modality, neuromagnetic imaging (NMI), which could potentially provide images of cerebral processing from a measurement of the magnetic field emitted by the brain during functional activation. A superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) based neuromagnetometer is operational in Dr. Singh's laboratory to record the neuromagnetic field evoked by different stimuli. In collaboration with the Computer Science and Neurosurgery departments, Dr. Singh received funding from a new Kaprielian Research Innovation Fund established at USC to pursue this interdisciplinary research from 1989 to 1993.
Dr. Singh has investigated the role of proton NMR spectroscopy in localizing brain activation in humans and obtained the first results showing a relationship between lactate and focal stimulation. He is now developing new techniques in functional MRI to image human brain function during various sensory and cognitive stimuli.
