Board Members
Ali Guermazi, MD, PhD
President
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Dr Guermazi is a Professor of Radiology & Medicine at Boston University School of Medicine. He is one of the three founders of the International Workshop on Osteoarthritis Imaging. Dr. Guermazi’s research focuses on imaging the musculoskeletal system, especially in characterizing the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and X-ray changes that occur in osteoarthritis (OA). He has been repeatedly involved in studies on meniscus, cartilage, synovitis and bone marrow lesions in knees, hip and spine and is extremely familiar with how best to acquire the images which optimize their assessment and with measuring these lesions. Recognized for scientific contributions in the MRI-based diagnosis and disease progression assessment of OA, he has been an MRI reader for assessing meniscus, cartilage, synovitis and bone marrow lesions in large NIH-funded studies (e.g., the Osteoarthritis Initiative (OAI), the Multicenter Osteoarthritis Study (MOST), the Health Aging and Body Composition (Health ABC) study, the Boston Osteoarthritis Knee study (BOKS), and the Framingham study). Dr. Guermazi is a principal investigator (PI) for several NIH-funded OAI ancillary projects. His work also focuses on imaging in sports medicine and especially the role of MRI in preventing sports injuries and predicting return to play.
He is the founder and Director of the Quantitative Imaging Center (QIC) within the Department of Radiology at Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, a research group focusing on Musculoskeletal Radiology and especially MRI that provides radiological analysis services for industry, foundation or NIH-sponsored trials.
Professor Guermazi was the Deputy Editor of the musculoskeletal imaging section for the RADIOLOGY journal from 2013-2019. He has authored or co-authored more than 560 peer-reviewed papers and made numerous scientific presentations at national and international osteoarthritis, rheumatology and radiology meetings.
Tuhina Neogi, MD, PhD
Secretary
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Dr. Neogi is a Professor and Chief of Rheumatology at Boston University School of Medicine and Professor of Epidemiology and Boston University School of Public Health. Her research focused primarily on risk factors for knee osteoarthritis and gout, pain mechanisms in knee osteoarthritis, as well as methodologic issues of relevance for rheumatic diseases. She has continuous peer-reviewed foundation and NIH funding since 2003 and has over 200 peer-reviewed publications to date. Dr. Neogi is a past chair of the FDA Arthritis Advisory Committee, serves/served on the boards two international societies: Osteoarthritis Research Society International (OARSI) and Gout, Hyperuricemia, and Crystal-Associated Diseases Network (G-CAN), and on committees for the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) and International Association for the Study Pain (IASP), among others. Her work has been recognized with the prestigious 2014 ACR Henry Kunkel Young Investigator Award for outstanding and promising independent contributions to rheumatology research (awarded to no more than one clinical researcher and/or one basic science researcher each year). She has also engaged in developing new classification criteria for a number of rheumatic diseases.
In addition to research, clinical work, and teaching, one of her key roles is to mentor trainees and junior faculty in musculoskeletal disease-related research. To that end, she was awarded the 2016 Robert Dawson Evans Research Mentoring Award. Dr. Neogi is also leading the new CTSI Research Career Support Program initiative, PRIME (Pathways to Research Independence and Mentoring Excellence), which aims to support early career mentored researchers to successfully transition to becoming independent researchers. She is on the Core Steering committee for the 2019 ACR-AF Osteoarthritis Treatment Guidelines and is co-PI of the 2020 ACR Gout Treatment Guidelines.
James (J.D.) Johnston, PhD, Peng
Treasurer
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Dr. Johnston is a Professor and Graduate Chair with the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Professor with the Division of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada. He is the Co-Director of the Musculoskeletal & Orthopaedic Biomechanical Imaging Laboratory (MOBIL).
Dr. Johnston’s research is focused on the development of imaging methods, computational models and treatment methods to improve understanding, diagnosis and clinical care of musculoskeletal disease and injury, with a focus on osteoarthritis and osteoporosis. His expertise with biomechanics and medical imaging has provided opportunities to collaborate both internationally and locally. One key osteoarthritis-related collaboration is with the Multicenter Osteoarthritis Study (MOST), in which he has developed custom image-processing methods to assess subchondral bone properties. His multi-disciplinary research approach has offered diverse contributions and led to the 2016 Saskatchewan Health Research Foundation (SHRF) Impact Award for building capacity, advancing knowledge, informing decision making, and providing health, economic and social impacts in the province of Saskatchewan.
Dr. Johnston is the author of >60 peer-reviewed publications and 2 patents (one patent design is incorporated on two Natural-Hip stems (DCM-J and APS) produced by Zimmer Inc). He is funded by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), Canadian Institute for Health Research (CFI), Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI), and SHRF.
In 2019, Dr. Johnston co-Chaired the annual IWOAI meeting in Prince Edward Island, Canada. He has served as a reviewer for various granting agencies (NSERC Discovery Grant, of which he was Co-Chair for Mechanical Engineering; CIHR, CIHR-NSERC Collaborative Health Research Program (CHRP), Arthritis Society, Canadian Arthritis Network,) as well as the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board (CEAB). Dr. Johnston is an Associate Editor for “BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders” and “Medicine”.
Felix Eckstein, MD
Vice President
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Professor Eckstein is Head of the Department of “Imaging and Functional Musculoskeletal Research” at the Institute of Anatomy and Cell Biology at Paracelsus Medical University, Salzburg Austria, since 2019. He was Director of the Institute between 2004 and 2019, and Associate Dean of Medicine between 2014 and 2019. His research focuses on the integration of imaging methods for understanding the morphology, function and disease of musculoskeletal tissues, in particular osteoarthritis. In 2010, he received the Clinical Research Award of the Osteoarthritis Research Society International (OARSI), granted at the World Congress of Osteoarthritis in Brussels, Belgium.
Professor Eckstein studied Medicine in Freiburg and Heidelberg and received scholarships to study at Bristol University (U.K.) and at the University of Innsbruck (Austria). From 1991 through 2004 he worked at the Institute of Anatomy at LMU in Munich, Germany, where he passed his "Habilitation". He was President of the German Society of Biomechanics (DGfB) from 2002 to 2003, board member of the DGfB from 2000 to 2005, Secretary General of the Osteoarthritis Research Society (OARSI) from 2005 to 2006, and board member of OARSI from 2005 to 2010. In 2003, Professor Eckstein founded Chondrometrics GmbH, a spinoff company that produces and licenses software for segmentation and data analysis of cartilage, meniscus, muscle and adipose tissue.
As a board member of OARSI, Professor Eckstein founded the International Workshop on Imaging in Osteoarthritis in 2007 and organized the first meeting in Ainring, Germany, with 126 participants. He was co-organizer of two subsequent annual workshops in Boston (2008) and Leeds, U.K. (2009), and organizer of the 5th workshop, which was held in Salzburg, Austria in 2011.
Professor Eckstein has authored more than 250 peer-reviewed international journal articles and more than 20 review articles and book chapters in the field of cartilage and bone research. He serves as Associate Editor of "Annals of Anatomy".
John Carrino, MD, PhD
Member
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Dr. Carrino is a Professor of Radiology at Weill Medical College of Cornell University, New York, and Vice Chair of Radiology and Imaging at Hospital for Special Surgery, New York. He is a Musculoskeletal Radiologist with particular expertise in diagnostic imaging, percutaneous image-guided intervention utilizing multiple modalities, and medical informatics. He has research experience as a primary investigator or co-investigator with NIH awards and academic industrial collaborations. He is an author and co-author on over 250 peer-reviewed publications. He is an Associate Editor of imaging for Arthritis & Rheumatology.
Dr. Carrino is an active participant in several national and international scientific and professional societies. He acts as an ACR (American College of Radiology) representative to the DICOM (Digital Imaging COmmunication in Medicine) Standards Committee. He has participated in research study sections for the NIH, RSNA, and VA as well as in panels for the FDA. Dr. Carrino has served on the Advisory Committee of the FDA Radiology Devices Panel, looking at computer aided diagnosis (CAD). He is a formal collaborator in the Laboratory for Imaging in Surgery, Therapy and Radiology at Johns Hopkins University. He contributes to the leadership of several national and international scientific and multidisciplinary professional societies such as North American Spine Society (NASS) and Spine Interventional Society (SIS).
Jeff Duryea, PhD
Member
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Dr. Duryea is an Associate Professor of Radiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), Harvard Medical School and director of the BWH Quantitative Musculoskeletal Imaging Group (QMIG). A physicist by training, Dr. Duryea specializes in the development and application of software-based quantitative image analysis tools to assess OA progression. He is the author and co-author of over 95 peer-reviewed publications and has been the principal investigator of 7 extramural National Institutes of Health (NIH) and foundation grants. An active member of the Osteoarthritis Initiative (OAI) community, his laboratory has provided measurements of radiographic joint space width for over 35,000 knee radiographic images from that study, which are part of the OAI public data release. In 2013-2014 Dr. Duryea served as a member of the OARSI Clinical Trial Guidelines Imaging Group and has also served on the Osteoarthritis Research Society International (OARSI) program and ethics committees.
Chris Ladel, PhD
Member
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Dr. Ladel is working as Chief Scientific Officer at BioBone B.V. in Amsterdam/Netherlands. In his role he is involved in design and execution of clinical studies from preclinical up to phase 3. Special remark and responsibility is in the field of preclinical investigations, biomarkers and imaging (MRI and x-ray) read-outs in clinical studies, mainly in osteoarthritis. He has contributed in the respective teams to analyze data and to develop further stratification strategies based on biomarkers (incl. imaging) for studies in osteoarthritis.
Trained as an immunologist with a PhD in immunopharmacology and immunotoxicology Dr Ladel has worked in different companies and different countries. Over the >15 years he was part of project teams or team leader in different projects for the discovery and development of therapies in osteoarthritis.
Dr. Ladel is an internationally recognized scientist and has authored > 50 scientific peer reviewed publications and is co-inventor in more than 10 patents in the field of clinical strategies for osteoarthritis.
Dr. Ladel is core member of the FNIH initiative for validation and qualification of biomarkers and imaging techniques in osteoarthritis. He has also started the Innovative Medicine Initiative for APPROACH (2 years multi-center European cohort study with approaches to qualify imaging technologies as well as other biomarkers) and is acting as a work-package lead in this initiative.
Colin Miller, PhD, FEPEM, CSci
Member
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Dr. Miller is a Managing Partner at The Bracken Group, (and CEO of BrackenData and Bracken Marketing). Colin has been providing medical and scientific consulting for over 30 years for the biopharmaceutical and device companies. The majority of his consulting has been in the area of metabolic bone disease and osteoarthritis and more recently in the evaluation on the safety effect on joints with anti-Nerve Growth Factors or aNGF’s. He has been an advisor on several safety boards and Ad-com’s and has presented at the FDA on several occasions and attended meetings in the development of the guidance documents, including Imaging in Clinical Trials.
Colin completed his undergraduate degree in Physiology and Zoology from the University of Sheffield, (UK) and his PhD through the University of Hull (UK) on the ultrasonic assessment of bone in the department of applied physics, while employed as a research assistant to an orthopedic surgeon. He has subsequently held positions at Syntex Research, Proctor & Gamble Pharmaceuticals, Bona Fide Ltd (part of the Lunar Corp, now GE) and BioClinica.
Colin holds 3 patents, has over 70 peer reviewed publications and has published 3 books through Springer, the latest entitled “Medical Imaging in Clinical Trials. He is a fellow of the Institute Physics and Engineering in Medicine (UK) and is a Chartered Scientist (UK) and has a pilot’s license.
Frank Roemer, MD
Member
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Dr. Roemer is a German board-certified musculoskeletal radiologist with a strong focus on MRI. He is Professor of Radiology at the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Adjunct Professor of Radiology at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM), Co-Director of the Quantitative Imaging Center at BUSM and attending radiologist and Director of Musculoskeletal Research at the Department of Radiology at the Universitätsklinikum Erlangen, Erlangen, Germany.
Dr. Roemer is an internationally recognized scientist and has authored > 340 scientific peer reviewed publications in the field of musculoskeletal radiology. Dr. Roemer’s research interests include imaging of musculoskeletal diseases, with a focus on MRI and osteoarthritis, and imaging in sports medicine. He is regularly invited internationally to present at major scientific conferences, has authored multiple book chapters, and educational and scientific exhibits at various international radiological, orthopedic and rheumatological meetings.
He developed and validated several instruments for tissue characterization in osteoarthritis and comprehensive joint assessment using quantitative and semiquantitative evaluation tools for application in cross-sectional and longitudinal fashion. He has been one of the main MRI readers for large epidemiologic studies including OAI; MOST, Framingham, KANON, VIDEO and others. Focus of his research is the application of those MRI-based instruments to better understand the natural history of degenerative joint diseases and particularly focus on prediction models to isolate patients at higher risk for disease incidence and progression. An additional focus is the role of post-traumatic changes and later OA development, which included development and introduction of the method of CT-arthrography in an animal model, multi-dimensional assessment of ACL injury and its sequelae and evaluation of radiographic imaging markers in young persons at increased risk for disease including young athletes.
He is Associate Editor for Imaging of one the leading journals of orthopedics and rheumatology “Osteoarthritis & Cartilage” since 2011. He has been Associate Editor for “BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders” from 2011-2013 and is currently holding a position as Editorial Advisor for that journal. He is also Editorial Board member of “European Radiology”, the number 2 general interest radiology journal in the field. He is working in close collaboration with multiple leading scientific institutions worldwide focusing on osteoarthritis and MSK disorders.
He is consortium partner in the European Union-funded multi-center APPROACH project, which brings together a strong team from European clinical centers (cohorts), basic research institutes (state-of-the-art tools) and SME/Industry (certified tool analyses and logistics) which also collaborate with large US-based OAI and MOST cohorts.