News

ESF to award European Latsis Prize to Professor Willi Kalender on Medical Imaging achievement

The European Science Foundation (ESF) will award this year’s European Latsis Prize to Professor Willi  Kalender from the Institute of Medical Physics at the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg in Germany for his contribution and in-depth research on the medical imaging field.

The European Latsis Prize, valued at 100,000 Swiss francs (€65,000) is financed by the Geneva-based Latsis Foundation and awarded by the ESF to an individual or group who, in the opinion of their peers, has made the greatest contribution to a particular field of European research. The chosen field for the 2008 prize is astrophysics.

Professor Kalender is scheduled to receive the European Latsis Prize in a ceremony at the ESF’s Science Policy Conference in Strasbourg on 29 November 2007. His main research interest is in the area of diagnostic imaging with a focus on the development and introduction of volumetric spiral computer tomography (CT). His other fields of research are radiation protection and the development of quantitative diagnostic procedures, e.g. for assessment of osteoporosis, lung and cardiac diseases. His work is widely documented in more than 700 scientific papers and 175 plus original publications.  

“Since 1999, the European Latsis Prize has rewarded researchers who have made outstanding progress in European research,” commented ESF President Ian Halliday. “The jury members all agreed that Professor Kalender’s contributions made to scientific excellence, societal impact and European progress are particularly outstanding and he truly deserves to be awarded with this year´s Prize.”

The award of the European Latsis Prize to Kalender is to recognise his achievements in developing, testing and establishing spiral CT. Spiral CT enabled the transition from sequential two-dimensional (2D) CT imaging to fast volumetric three-dimensional (3D) imaging, which led to a complete change of paradigm in imaging. Spiral CT also allows diagnostic imaging of a level and in areas that were not possible with conventional 2D CT imaging.

Nowadays spiral CT has been fully integrated into clinical practice which resulted into two considerable benefits for the patient: reduction of examination times from half an hour down to as little as a few seconds and invention of completely new and more advanced applications. The development of spiral CT represents how successful transational research can contribute to both basic imaging science and clinical practice.

“I am overwhelmed and truly happy,” said Kalender.  “Medical Imaging has gotten quite a bit of attention in recent years. It is generally acknowledged that the advances in 3D imaging with different mosalities such as CT, MR, PET and ultrasound has brought remarkable and practically relevant progress for diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. I hope that the award of the European Latsis Prize by the European Science Foundation in 2007 to work Medical Imaging will have a further positive effect on this field of research.”

Kalender received his Master`s Degree and Ph.D. in Medical Physics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin, U.S. in 1979. In 1988 he completed all postdoctoral lecturing qualifications (Habilitation) for Medical Physics at the University of Tübingen. From 1979 to 1995 he worked in the research laboratories of Siemens Medical Systems in Erlangen, Germany, from 1988 to 1995 as head of the department of Medical Physics. Since 1991 he has been Adjunct Associate Professor of Medical Physics at the University of Wisconsin, from 1993 to 1995 he lectured at the Technical University of Munich. Since 1995 he was appointed full professor and director of the newly established Institute of Medical Physics at the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany.

He also holds appointments as Distinguished Visiting Professor at Stanford University, Department of Radiology, and as Visiting Professor to the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Department of Medical Physics. He is a member of the International Commission on Radiation Units and Measurement (ICRU).

More information about Professor Kalender’s works:

The first communications on spiral CT by Dr. Kalender in the early 1990s demonstrated that spiral CT enables fast scanning by moving the patient on the table continuously through the gantry. First, these findings were met with disbelief and – partly - with harsh criticism. The experts in the scientific community, including the manufacturers, assumed that the implementation of this technique would be hampered by a severe impairment of image quality due to artefacts.

However, these artefacts were avoided by introducing various types of so-called z-interpolation schemes. In addition, Dr. Kalender was able to show that the image quality could be enhanced significantly with respect to 3D spatial resolution. He was the first to demonstrate the potential advantages of isotropic 3D spatial resolution. This feature became realty in clinical practice at the beginning of the 21st century. Today isotropic spatial resolution is the basis for many successful clinical applications such as CT angiography and virtual colonoscopy. Furthermore, it set a standard for other competing imaging modalities, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), in order to achieve uncompromised 3D performance.

The impact of spiral CT and its dedicated applications was extraordinarily high and led to a „renaissance“ of CT in the 1990s. At that time, CT science was practically non-existent, partly due to the assumption that CT would soon be replaced by MRI. Today many scientific sessions and conferences are solely dedicated to basic CT imaging and many new developments are arising. At the same time, clinical CT imaging science has profited just as much and is nowadays nearly omnipresent at radiological conferences. In accordance with this, Dr. Kalender´s contributions are highly recognized by his peers world-wide. He received a number of awards, was elected member of several editorial boards of international scientific journals and he organized a number of workshops and conferences throughout the world. It is not only the advancement of basic science and the change and improvement of radiological diagnostics, but his work also had a positive effect for European medical imaging systems manufacturers, who improved their marketing position significantly. The huge impact of his work on science, the medical industry and patient care reflects the broad orientation of the nominee: his particular strength apparently lies in establishing interdisciplinary work and research projects which involve not only different disciplines of medicine, natural sciences and engineering, but also industrial partners.”

Contact for Prof. Dr. Willi A. Kalender

Telephone: +49-(0)9131-85-22310

Email: willi.kalender@imp.uni-erlangen.de

---

Media contact:

Mr. Thomas LauE-Mail