Faculty Profile: Walter Block

Walter Block's interest in multi-disciplinary study extends far beyond his broad education. As one of two new appointments to the biomedical engineering department, Assistant Professor Block will study magnetic resonance (MR) contrast mechanisms, interventional procedures, angiography and cardiac imaging.

Creating new imaging techniques

It was the many career paths available to engineers that convinced him to enroll in the electrical engineering program at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. "I liked the broad spectrum of what you could do in electrical engineering -- especially with all the developments brought on by miniaturization and increased computing power. I focused on systems and communication engineering," said Block, who also holds a joint appointment in the Department of Medical Physics.

While earning his master's degree at Stanford University a few years later, Block took a course on medical resonance imaging and enjoyed how it used the fundamentals of several areas of his previous studies. He also did some research on a MRI system operated by an engineering group. "This was pretty unique because most of the research done in the field had to be done on hospital systems," said Block. "We had full-time use of that machine."

After receiving his degree, Block joined GE Medical Systems, where he programmed MR acquisition sequences in the computer engineering group. Here he saw how the pioneering imaging work at universities was translated into product offerings that could improve patient care around the world. "The numerous parameters that can be manipulated through software modification makes MR very attractive," said Block. "You can add or enhance the capability to image and measure so many phenomena without ever changing the hardware." He later joined the systems engineering group, where he held the technical lead on some software releases and resolved image quality problems.

Throughout his work at GE, Block remained in contact with his professors at Stanford. When he was offered a position as a research assistant in 1993, he went back to the university for his PhD and worked on fast acquisition techniques for abdominal imaging.

"MR had always been strong in imaging stationary structures, but it had not done well in areas where scan time was limited to a breath hold--like in the abdomen. We worked on techniques that moved scan time from a breath hold to sub-second imaging," Block explained. "When scans are faster, everything gets simpler. Patients don't have to hold their breath, the physician doesn't make compromises and small structures are sharper. The sensitivity is much greater."

While new to the biomedical engineering department, Block has been a part of UW-Madison for over two years. After completing his PhD in 1998, Block was hired to assist the MR Angiography research lab within the Medical Physics department. This lab had developed techniques to image a contrast injection as it flowed from the arterial to the venous system, but the work was not clinically feasible because the processing took so long. Now a real-time system allows Block to pull data from the scanner and reconstruct it in real-time. This system simplifies several aspects of the exam while allowing the physician to view the results while the patient is still at the scanner. The system also offers exciting opportunities to modify the exam as it occurs based on the provided feedback.

Block's role in the biomedical engineering department is to expand MR beyond its diagnostic uses to intervention purposes, like minimally invasive surgery. "My job is to work on fast imaging techniques that are applicable for both imaging tracking devices and for imaging the effects of treatment," he said. "For example, we'd like to do endovascular work: When a physician places a catheter into an artery or a vein, we can use MR to direct it where to go--we can image the catheter and the treatment. We're putting the components in place."

Block is making MR more than just a tool for examining anatomy. His work will make the applications of this technology as varied and diverse as his own research interests.