After receiving his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1971, Dr. Singh conducted post-doctoral studies at UCLA in Biomedical Physics at the Laboratory of Nuclear Medicine and Radiation Biology, where he worked on the first PET camera with Dr. Cho. Subsequently he spent one year at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota as a Visiting Scholar of the American Heart Association where he did the first studies in SPECT. He joined the Department of Radiology at USC in 1977 and received a joint appointment in Biomedical Engineering in 1988.
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 the anatomy and function of the heart.
In 1980 he was funded by NCI to develop a new electronically collimated SPECT camera design proposed by him to improve the sensitivity and high-energy imaging capabilities of mechanically collimated scintillation cameras. He successfully designed a prototype scintillation camera coupled to an array of germanium semiconducting detectors to collimate medium (140keV) to high-energy (661 keV) gamma rays based on recording Compton scattered photons from the germanium onto the uncollimated scintillation camera. New cone-beam reconstruction algorithms were also developed to reconstruct 3D images from these counts. Dr. Singh was the nationally elected AdCom representative for Nuclear Medical Sciences in the IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Society (NPSS) from 1986-1989, co-founder of the IEEE Medical Imaging Conference in 1990, the technical chair for Nuclear Medical Sciences within IEEE NPSS from 1991 -1993, and Scientific Program Chair of the 1992 and 1993 IEEE Medical Imaging Conferences. During the mid 80s he also proposed the concept of using magnetoencephalography (MEG) to image the electrical activity of distribute neuronal sources inside the human brain and operated a SQUID MEG lab at USC.
His current interests are in functional MRI and DTI tractography with applications of DTI to Alzheimer Disease and Traumatic Brain Injury. He is the founder and Director of the Neuroimaging core at USC, which develops new methodology in fMRI and DTI. He has developed new approaches to improve the spatio-temporal resolution in fMRI and novel methods to quantify brain connectivity using DTI. Dr. Singh is also the founding director of the graduate program in Biomedical Imaging within the Department of Biomedical Engineering at USC.
·Singh M et al. “Novel DTI Methodology to Detect and Quantify Injured Regions and Affected Brain Pathways in Traumatic Brain Injury”, Magn Reson Imag (In review, 2009).
·Singh M et al. “Co-registration of In-Vivo Human MRI Brain Images to Postmortem Histological Microscopic Images”, Int J Imaging Syst and Technology, 18:325-335, 2008.
·Singh M et al."Correlation between BOLD-fMRI and EEG signal changes in response to visual stimulus frequency in humans", Magn Reson in Medicine 49:108-114, 2003.
·Singh, M et al. “Reconstruction of Images from Neuromagnetic Fields”. IEEE Trans. Nucl. Science NS-31 (1): 585-589, 1984.
·Singh, M., “An Electronically Collimated Gamma Camera for Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography. Part 1: Theoretical Considerations and Design Criteria”. Medical Physics 10(4): 421-427,1983.
·Singh, M et al. “Emission Computed Tomography and Its Application to Acute Myocardial Infarct Imaging in Intact Dogs Using Tc-Pyrophosphate”. J. Nucl. Med. 20: No. 1, 50-56,1979.
·Text Book: Cho ZH, Jones JP, Singh M, "Foundations of Medical Imaging" John Wiley and Sons, New York 1993.
Background
After receiving his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1971, Dr. Singh conducted post-doctoral studies at UCLA in Biomedical Physics at the Laboratory of Nuclear Medicine and Radiation Biology, where he worked on the first PET camera with Dr. Cho. Subsequently he spent one year at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota as a Visiting Scholar of the American Heart Association where he did the first studies in SPECT. He joined the Department of Radiology at USC in 1977 and received a joint appointment in Biomedical Engineering in 1988.
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 the anatomy and function of the heart.
In 1980 he was funded by NCI to develop a new electronically collimated SPECT camera design proposed by him to improve the sensitivity and high-energy imaging capabilities of mechanically collimated scintillation cameras. He successfully designed a prototype scintillation camera coupled to an array of germanium semiconducting detectors to collimate medium (140keV) to high-energy (661 keV) gamma rays based on recording Compton scattered photons from the germanium onto the uncollimated scintillation camera. New cone-beam reconstruction algorithms were also developed to reconstruct 3D images from these counts. Dr. Singh was the nationally elected AdCom representative for Nuclear Medical Sciences in the IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Society (NPSS) from 1986-1989, co-founder of the IEEE Medical Imaging Conference in 1990, the technical chair for Nuclear Medical Sciences within IEEE NPSS from 1991 -1993, and Scientific Program Chair of the 1992 and 1993 IEEE Medical Imaging Conferences. During the mid 80s he also proposed the concept of using magnetoencephalography (MEG) to image the electrical activity of distribute neuronal sources inside the human brain and operated a SQUID MEG lab at USC.
His current interests are in functional MRI and DTI tractography with applications of DTI to Alzheimer Disease and Traumatic Brain Injury. He is the founder and Director of the Neuroimaging core at USC, which develops new methodology in fMRI and DTI. He has developed new approaches to improve the spatio-temporal resolution in fMRI and novel methods to quantify brain connectivity using DTI. Dr. Singh is also the founding director of the graduate program in Biomedical Imaging within the Department of Biomedical Engineering at USC.
