Lena Kranold Wins Arthur Pilla Young Scientist Award at BioEM2023!

Lena Kranold, IT’IS Foundation postdoctoral researcher for applied medical electromagnetics research, was this year's winner of the Arthur Pilla Young Scientist Award presented at BioEM2023, the annual meeting of the BioEM Society. This year's meeting was held June 18 – 23 in Oxford, UK. Lena's winning presentation, entitled Development of Morbidly Obese Anatomical Phantoms for MR Safety Applications, was co-authored by Tolga Goren, Bryn Lloyd, Silvia Farcito, and Niels Kuster.

In her presentation, Lena described efforts to extend the patient coverage of the Virtual Population (ViP) full-body anatomical phantoms to include morbidly obese patients for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) simulations and implant safety assessments of obese patients exposed to wide-bore MRI systems. Physics-based morphing was used to generate realistic models of morbidly obese patients with varying body-mass-indices (BMI) and musculature. A morphed version of the adult female ViP model Ella was produced through increases primarily to subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT) up to a BMI of 63. Two versions of obese male Fats were created, one with a BMI of 66 attained primarily through SAT increase, and the other with BMI of 70 created via increased SAT and muscle mass. The electric fields induced during simulated MRI scans of the different BMI patients were compared along generic active and passive implant routings.

The Arthur Pilla Young Scientist Award, awarded to the best presentation by a young scientist at the annual BioEM meeting, is sponsored by the Arthur A. Pilla Research Foundation, to honor Dr. Pilla (1935 – 2015), pioneering bioelectrochemist and global expert on non-invasive electrotherapeutics.

Congratulations Lena!