DGMP Science Award for Prof. Dr. Moritz Zaiß
Congratulations to Prof. Dr. Moritz Zaiß for winning the 2022 Science Award of the DGMP.
Since 2002, the German Society for Medical Physics e.V. has awarded the Science Prize every two years to a scientist from the field of medical physics in recognition of outstanding scientific achievements. At the 53rd annual meeting of the DGMP e.V., this prize was awarded to Prof. Dr. Moritz Zaiß for his research focusing on the development and characterisation of new MR contrasts for metabolic imaging. His research group and he make significant contributions to the development of the “chemical exchange saturation transfer” (CEST) method, which can detect diseases even before actual substantial structural changes in the tissue. The chemical process of proton exchange is used to visualise changes in cell metabolism using water imaging. This information can be obtained non-invasively, without contrast agents and with a significant signal amplification (up to three orders of magnitude) compared to MR spectroscopy. The aim is to make this method available in clinical routine.
Another project by Prof. Dr. Moritz Zaiß describes the implementation of a self-learning MRI, which achieves the desired MR contrast via self-selected sequence and reconstruction parameters. Thus, not the MR sequence would determine the contrast, but the contrast would determine the MR sequence.