From the November 2017 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
An ambitious educator and internationally recognized scientist,
J. William Charboneau is a leading authority in diagnostic ultrasound and image-guided ablation of cancer of the liver, kidney and bone.
A professor emeritus of radiology at the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine in Rochester, Minn., Charboneau received his medical degree from the University of Wisconsin in Madison and completed his radiology residency at the Mayo Clinic. He began his career in the radiology department at the Mayo Clinic and continued to practice there for 30 years, until his retirement in 2010.
Charboneau pioneered the use of diagnostic ultrasonography for the characterization of focal thyroid nodules and liver masses and the critical role of ultrasound in distinguishing benign from malignant lesions. He was also an early leader in the development of image-guided intervention for procedures including biopsy and ablation.
His clinical expertise and extensive research led to the publication of radiology’s most authoritative reference book on ultrasound imaging, Diagnostic Ultrasound. Charboneau and his fellow editors worked with more than 100 authors from around the world to finalize this book that is now in its fifth edition. In addition to this seminal work, he also authored more than 175 scientific publications and he is co-editor of several other textbooks.
Because of his expertise in imaging of thyroid cancer, the National Academy of Sciences asked him to join a committee to research the health implications of the I-131 fallout from nuclear bomb testing that took place between the 1940s and 1960s over the western U.S. From his work on this committee, he published several studies and perspectives on the role of ultrasound imaging in detection of thyroid cancer.
Charboneau presented the 2006 RSNA Eugene P. Pendergrass New Horizons Lecture entitled, “Image-Guided Cancer Treatment: The Science and Vision of an Emerging Field.” He served as a member of the RSNA Public Information Committee and on the Public Information Advisors Network.
Charboneau’s contributions to the art and science of radiology have been recognized with multiple awards, including the 2014 GI Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Abdominal Radiology and the 2015 Lawrence A. Mack Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Radiologists in Ultrasound.
Founding director of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering,
Roderic I. Pettigrew, Ph.D., M.D., is an innovative leader in convergence research who is helping lay the groundwork for tomorrow’s medicine.
Pettigrew has charted the course for the National Institute of Health’s critical work in harnessing the power of transdisciplinary teams to create new technologies and catalyze discoveries that usher in a new era of medicine. He continually advances the Institute’s mission to integrate life sciences with engineering and the physical sciences to transform basic research and medical care.
Among his accomplishments at NIBIB, Pettigrew jointly led a national effort with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to create new interdisciplinary graduate training programs. In 2008, he established the Quantum Grants program to achieve “medical moon shots.” Recently, he championed a broad-based effort to address paralysis by advancing technologies that partially restore voluntary motor and autonomic function following spinal cord injury and established an Indo-U.S. partnership to invent new technologies for passive, cuffless blood pressure monitoring. He created the NIBIB Trailblazer grant award for early-stage investigators in exploratory high impact research.
Pettigrew was an early advocate of a national system for patient-controlled sharing of medical images, leading to the RSNA Image Share project, which is poised to help realize the goals of the NIH precision medicine initiative “All of Us.” He co-chairs the Congressionally-requested federal Inter-Agency Working Group on Medical Imaging. Dr. Pettigrew serves as the NIH liaison to NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy. He co-leads a joint effort with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to develop a cell phone-based platform to test for influenza and other diseases at home.
At the time of his NIBIB appointment, Pettigrew was serving as professor of radiology and medicine at the Emory University School of Medicine, and professor of bioengineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, both in Atlanta. During this time, Dr. Pettigrew became known for pioneering work developing 4-D imaging of the cardiovascular system using MR.
A graduate of Morehouse College in Atlanta, Pettigrew earned his Ph.D. in applied radiation physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., and his medical degree from the University of Miami School of Medicine.
Among his numerous honors, Pettigrew presented the RSNA 75th Anniversary Diamond Jubilee New Horizons Lecture. He received the Pritzker Distinguished Achievement Award of the Biomedical Engineering Society, the Distinguished Service Award of the National Medical Association, the Pierre Galletti Award of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering, the inaugural Gold Medal Award of the Academy of Radiology Research and the Distinguished Service Medal of the International Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine. He is an elected member of the U.S. National Academy of Medicine and the National Academy of Engineering, and an elected foreign fellow of the National Academy of Science in India.
