Ben Levy

Research interests:
I am a medical imaging physicist focused on ultrasound. Ultrasound is a versatile, cost-effective, and safe imaging modality with a wide variety of applications ranging from emergency medicine and cardiology to prenatal care. Challenges arise, however, when the object of interest has similar acoustic properties to the surrounding tissue. For example, when diagnosing a blood clot, clinicians often cannot rely on the clot being intrinsically visible in the image. Furthermore, conventional ultrasound cannot provide quantitative information on the stiffness or size of the clot, which are important properties that doctors use to make treatment decisions.

I am working to develop a new type of contrast-enhanced ultrasound imaging called “Magnetomotive Ultrasound” or “MMUS.” In MMUS, magnetic nanoparticle tracers may be used to label items of interest within the body. An external magnetic field is then applied which sets the particles in motion. This motion can be detected under ultrasound, thus giving us a means of identifying magnetically-labeled regions (such as blood clots) that would not otherwise be visible.

Work in the Levy Lab spans tabletop experimentation, bench chemistry, image processing, and computation. I am always excited to mentor students, so feel free to read more and reach out if you’re interested!