Faculty and Staff

You are here

J. Thomas Vaughan, Ph.D.

Professor
1-211A CMRR
612-626-2001
vaugh020@umn.edu

Dr. Thomas Vaughan is a professor with tenure in the Departments of Radiology, Electrical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Vaughan administers the Engineering Core of the Center for Magnetic Resonance Research. After receiving two B.S. degrees in electrical engineering and biology at Auburn University, Dr. Vaughan went to work for NASA at Kennedy Space Center. Following the first Space Shuttle launch, Dr. Vaughan was recruited for a DOD project at Texas Instruments in Dallas before continuing his graduate education and employment at the University of Texas Southwestern. Here he worked as the RF Engineer on a project to construct the first 2T human NMR system begun in 1984. In 1989 Dr. Vaughan took the post of Chief Engineer for a University of Alabama – Philips Research Labs consortium to build the first 4T system sited in the U.S. Dr Vaughan received his doctoral degree in Biomedical Engineering from the UAB in 1993, after which he accepted the positions of Assistant Professor at Harvard University and Assistant in Physics and Director of Engineering at the Massachusetts General Hospital NMR Center. Following a four year term at the MGH to help commission a 3T system and launch a 7T program, Dr. Vaughan accepted tenure at the University of Minnesota in 1999 where he continues his work at 4T, 7T, 9.4T and beyond.

Research Interests:

  • Development of ultrahigh field magnetic resonance techniques and technology for biomedical applications.
  • Coil and circuits design for radio frequency (RF) field generation and reception
  • Modeling and measurement of RF field propagation and losses in the human anatomy
  • Advancing the state-of-the-art in neurological, cardiac, and breast imaging through high field NMR.

Selected Publications:

Vaughan JT, Hetherington HP, Otu JO, Pan JW, Pohost GM. High frequency volume coils for clinical nuclear magnetic resonance imaging and spectroscopy. Magn Reson Med. 1994; 32:206-218.

Hetherington HP,Spencer DD, Vaughan JT, Pan JW: Quantitative 31P spectroscopic imaging of human brain at 4T: Assessment of Gray & White Matter Differences Phosphocreatine & ATO.Magn Reson Med 45:46-52 (2001).

Vaughan JT, Garwood M, Collins CM, Liu W, DelaBarre L, Adriany G, Andersen P, Merkle H, Goebel R, Smith MB, Ugurbil K: 7T vs 4T: RF power, homogeneity, & signal-to-noise comparison in head images. Magn.Reson.Med. 46:24-30(2001)

Yacoub E, Shmuel A, Pfeuffer P, Van de Mortele P-F, Adriany G, Andersen P, Vaughan T, Merkle H, Ugurbil K, Hu X. Imaging brain function in human at 7 tesla. Magn Reson Med; 45:588-594 (2001)

Vaughan JT, Adriany G, Garwood M, Yocoub E, Duong T, Merkle H, Andersen P, DelaBarre L, Kim S-G, Ugurbil K, A Detunable Volume Coil for High Field NMR Magn. Reson. Med. 47:990-1000(2002)

Vaughan JT, Adriany G, Snyder CJ, Tian J, Thiel T, Bolinger L, Liu H, DelaBarre L, Ugurbil K: Efficient high-frequency body coil for high-field MRI. Magn Reson Med 52:851-859 (2004)

Adriany G, Van de Moortelle P-F, Wiesinger F, Moeller S, Strupp J, Andersen P, Snyder C, Zhang X, Chen W, Pruessmann K, Boesiger P, Vaughan T , Ugurbil K. “Transmit and receive transmission line arrays for 7 Tesla parallel imaging”, Magn Reson Med 53: 434-445 (2005)