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Paul Carson

PAUL L. CARSON

Profession:
Radiological Physicist Specializing in Ultrasound

Birth:
Ogden, Utah
November 19, 1942

Education:
Colorado College,  B.S. in Physics, 1965
University of Arizona, M.S. in Physics, 1969, Ph.D. in Physics, 1972

Certifications:
American Board of Radiology, Radiological Physics, 1976

Career:
During his career in Medical Physics Dr. Carson has held positions of instructor through Associate Professor in the Department of Radiology, at the University of Colorado Medical Center in Denver and Associate Professor through  BRS Collegiate Professor in the Department of Radiology at the University of Michigan.  After 35 years in essentially the same job in two schools, he realized that his primary activity 11-12 months a year had been with educational institutions continuously since his freshman year of college.

Lured by the challenges of Sputnik as well as the mental stimulation, Paul majored in physics.  After consecutive summers in space physics at Columbia (1964) and MIT, and a year in high energy physics at Harvard, he took an assistantship in nuclear physics at the University of Arizona.  Nearing his Ph.D. in nuclear physics, with the long term rewards of a series of postdocs or driving a cab being what they were, he began looking for a position in an applied area of physics.  The position at Colorado as instructor and coordinator of the medical physics training program under Dr. William Hendee was an excellent entry to medical physics.   The nuclear imaging project Dr. Carson initiated was not immediately funded, whereas several ultrasound research, safety, QC and training projects were, so he became an acoustical physicist with no formal training in the subject.  The first large grants were in ultrasonic CT and characterization of fetal organ maturity.

The move to the larger University of Michigan Department of Radiology was made to start its first diagnostic medical physics support with a new Radiological Physics and Engineering Division.  This move was challenging in the midst of a major recession in the area and an unexpected change in Radiology department leadership.  Previous grants were renewed and colleagues who moved from Colorado and other recruits helped the division survive and become a success; we have been in the top three in NIH funding of Radiology/Radiation Oncology department funding the last three years.  Radiology was just competing to control MRI, and Dr. Carson worked on MRI site planning and research, returning his primary research to ultrasound after full time MRI physicists were in place. Graduate students were available from a large variety of academic departments and programs and we are only just now making a successful push to develop a graduate and postdoctoral training program in the medical school. 

Dr. Carson has published over 140 articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals, plus over 170 other publications and 450 abstracts.   For an academic researcher, he has spent a rather large amount of time in standards and other activities for professional societies and in evaluation of performance and safety of existing medical equipment and methods.   This is not an unusual roll for the medical physicist, a combination of service toward current health care and future knowledge and capabilities.  The last 15 years, however, have been dedicated more toward imaging research that might have a long term impact.  Work on quantification of perfusion from color flow Doppler signals helped lead to the implementation of power Doppler imaging [7].  The AIUM Standard 100 mm Test Object developed by Paul [1] served many years as the dominant QC device for diagnostic ultrasound and an acoustic output survey [3] led to several of the levels still used by the FDA as guidelines for 510(k) approvals.  A long series of studies on generation of microbubbles in vivo [8, 11] may well achieve clinical success and probably helped stimulate development by his colleagues Charles Cain and Brian Fowlkes and their students of a most promising cavitation approach to therapeutic tissue ablation, hystotripsy.  Estimation of flow and perfusion by 3D and 4D ultrasound [10, 13], with its better statistical sampling of flow compared with 2D measures and the usually large changes with pathology will continue to grow in importance, particularly as corrections for homogeneous and inhomogeneous tissues, including the skull, can be applied.   Image based registration, developed in a practical form by Dr. Carson’s colleague Charles Meyer was shown to serve many common to unique applications in medical ultrasound and its use with other modalities [9,12].  Photoacoustic tomography is a multimodality technique that will find a substantial roll in medicine with its contrast from spectroscopic optical absorption and its high resolution from ultrasound [14].  Assessment of arthritis and its treatment might be one of the first large applications.  The earliest ultrasonic CT attenuation images of the breast in vivo in combination with speed of sound and highly compounded pulse echo images [4] were promising but not ready.  They are now looking very good in some programs and will be competing in the future with ultrasound imaging in combination with x-ray tomosynthesis [15] and possibly photoacoustics for the dominant breast screening roll.

Selected Publications:

  1. Carson PL, Leung SS, Hendee WR, Holmes JH, Lindsey LF. A sealed test tank for echoscope performance evaluation. J. Clinical Ultrasound 1973; 1:208-18.
  2. Carson PL, Wenzel WW, Avery P, Hendee WR. Ultrasound imaging as an aid to cancer therapy. I. Int. J. Radiat. Oncol. Biol. Phys. 1975; 1:119-132.
  3. Carson PL, Fischella PR, Oughton TV. Ultrasonic power and intensities produced by diagnostic ultrasound equipment. Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology 1978; 3:341-350.
  4. Carson PL, Meyer CR, Scherzinger AL, Oughton TV. Breast imaging in coronal planes with simultaneous pulse echo and transmission ultrasound. Science 1981; 214:1141-43.
  5. Covell MM, Hearshen DO, Carson PL. Automated analysis of multiple performance characteristics in magnetic resonance imaging systems. Medical Physics 1986; 13:815-23.
  6. Carson PL, Chiang EH, Rubin JM, Meyer CR, Andersen HF, Marks TI. Pre- to postnatal reduction in ultrasound attenuation coefficient of the liver. Investigative Radiology 1991; 26:8-12.
  7. Rubin JM, Bude RO, Carson PL, Bree RL, Adler RS. Power Doppler US: A potentially useful alternative to mean frequency-based color Doppler US. Radiol. 1994; 190:853-6.
  8. Ivey JA, Gardner EA, Fowlkes JB, Rubin JM, Carson PL. Acoustic generation of intra-arterial contrast boluses. Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology 1995; 21:757-67.
  9. Moskalik A, Carson PL, Meyer CR, Fowlkes JB, Rubin JM, Roubidoux MA. Registration of three-dimensional compound ultrasound scans of the breast for refraction and motion correction. Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology 1995; 21:769-78.
  10. Carson PL, Fowlkes JB, Roubidoux MA, et al. 3-D color Doppler image quantification of breast masses. Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology 1998; 24:945-52.
  11. Kripfgans OD, Fowlkes JB, Woydt M, Eldevik OP, Carson PL. In vivo droplet vaporization for occlusion therapy and phase aberration correction. IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control 2002; 49:726-38.
  12. Krücker JF, LeCarpentier GL, Fowlkes JB, Carson PL. Rapid elastic image registration for 3-D ultrasound. IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging 2002; 21:1384-94.
  13. Woydt M, Kripfgans OD, Fowlkes BJ, Roosen K, Carson PL. Functional imaging with intraoperative ultrasound: Detection of somatosensory cortex in dogs with color-duplex sonography. Neurosurgery 2005; 56:355-62.
  14. Wang X, Chamberland DL, Carson PL, et al. Imaging of joints with laser-based photoacoustic tomography: An animal study. Medical Physics 2006; 33:2691-7.
  15. Sinha SP, Goodsitt MM, Roubidoux MA, et al. Automated ultrasound scanning on a dual-modality breast imaging system: Coverage and motion issues and solutions. Journal of Ultrasound in Medicine 2007; 26:645-55.

Awards:
1960             High school student body president
1961             Boettcher Scholarship
1963             Member, Phi Beta Kappa, physical and social science honor societies and Blue Key
1964             College student body president
1965             BS, Magna Cum Laude & Award for Outstanding Contributions to Colo. College   
1974,77        Society of Photo-optical Instrum. Eng’rs, Outstanding Service Award, & Citation
1975             Tau Sigma (honorary fraternity) Outstanding Alumnus Award
1977,80        President's Recognition Award, American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine
1982             Fellow, American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine
1984             Outstanding Scientific Presentation, Great Lakes Chapter, Health Physics Society
1989             Fellow, American Association of Physicists in Medicine
1990             Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology Prize for most innovative clinical paper
1990             Fellow, Acoustical Society of America, for contributions to medical ultrasonics
1996             Fellow, American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering
1997             Joseph H. Holmes Basic Science Pioneer Award, Am. Inst. Ultrasound in Medicine
1997             Fellow, American College of Radiology
2001             Endowed Professorship, University of Michigan Dept. of Radiology
2004             Colorado College, Lois T. Benezet Alumni Award for outstanding achievement in one’s chosen field

American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) Activities:
President-Elect, President and Chairman of the Board, 1986-1988
Chairman, Committee on General Medical Physics, 1974-77
Member of the Science Council 1974-77, 1979-~82
Program Chairman of 1974 Summer School
President of Rocky Mountain Chapter, 1975-76
Representative or alternate representative to ACEMB, 1974~79
Representative to Acoustical Society Medical Standards Board, 1981-~1990
Member of Scientific Program Committee, 1976-77
Chairman, Ultrasound Task Group, 1977-82
Member of Board of Directors, 1979-82
Member NMR Committee and Chairman, NMR Site Planning Task Group, 1982-86
Reviewer, Young Investigators Prize, 1982-4, 1988-91
Chairman, Ad Hoc Committee on Medical Physics Diversification, 1986-87
Executive Committee 1986-88
Nominating Committee, Chairman, 1988, Member, 1989-97
Ultrasound Task Group, 1988-89
Representative to Radiology Centennial, 1989-96
Member, Development Committee, 1989- 93, 1995->
Member, Awards Selection Committee, 1990-99
Member, Subcommittee on Graduate Fellowship Selection, 1991-~95
Member, Research Committee, 1989-1992, (as liaison to Acad. Radiol. Res.) 2001->
Member, Council on Special Interest Groups, 1989-1996
Member, Ultrasound Committee, 1990-93,  resource member 1993->
AIP Board and Executive Committee Representative, 1989-1993
Representative to AIUM/FDA/NEMA Standards Committee on Real Time Labeling of Ultrasound Systems , 1990-92.
Chairman, Radiological Sciences Centennial Ad Hoc Committee, 1991-96
Consultant, Ad Hoc Committee on the Future of Medical Imaging, 1991
Member, Subcom. on Secondary and Community College Education, 1997-98
Member, Ultrasound Task Group No. 1  QA, Phantoms, Standards 1998->
Member, Task Group No. 8  Women in the AAPM, 1998-2000
Member, Secondary Education & Teaching Subcommittee  1999->
Member, Development, Planned Giving Subcommittee, 2000->
Cochair, Chair, Member Research TG 1, 122 and 146, NIBIB Implications 2001->
Member, Presidential Ad Hoc Committee on Imaging, 2001-3
Chair, Imaging Physics Committee, 2006-07
Vice Chair, Science Council, 2006-07

Other Professional Organization Activities:

Civic Activities:
Habitat for Humanity
Dixboro Earth Advocacy
Precinct Leader
Shelter Meals

Avocations and Special Interests:
Audio books
Geneology
Photography
Walking/running
Risk and Bridge

Family:
Wife:  Pat Carson
Daughter: Cari Dietz
Husband:  Matt Dietz
Children: Sydney and Carson

Son: James
Wife: Lena (Rangel)
Children: Isabela, Sophia, Nicholas