Biography

Kenneth Kwong, PhD, received his PhD in High Energy Physics from the University of California, Riverside. Dr. Kwong has been conducting magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) research for more than 30 years with expertise in diffusion (R.1), functional imaging (R.2) and perfusion imaging (R.3). He was one of the earliest researchers to explore MR diffusion imaging of healthy subjects and patients. His team presented the first MR human diffusion anisotropy result in a conference paper, in 1988 at the annual meeting of the Society of Magnetic Resonance (R.1). He conducted the first successful human functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment utilizing intrinsic blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) signal (R.2). He was the first to apply MRI selective and nonselective inversion pulses for arterial spin labeling for perfusion imaging (R.3). He maintained a longstanding collaboration with Dr. Kathleen Hui on neuroimaging of peripheral nerve stimulation such as acupuncture/needling intervention. His current work includes non-invasive measurement of heme oxygenase-1 for autoimmune and inflammatory markers; a collaboration with Dr. Chan on brain-body interaction of respiratory gas exchange metrics; and collaborations with different teams on developing new imaging techniques to discover new brain markers for traumatic brain injury, atrial fibrillation and many other challenging disorders.