J. Ross Mitchell, Ph.D.
Contact Information:
Room 2AA10, Health Research Innovation Center
3330 Hospital Drive NW, Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2N 4N1
Phone: 403-210-6667
Email: rmitch@ucalgary.ca
Mitchell Lab Website
Dr. Ross Mitchell is Associate Professor, Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada Donald Paty Scholar, and Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research Senior Scholar in the Departments of Radiology and Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Calgary. He is also an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Calgary and in the Department of Applied Math at the University of Waterloo.
In 1986, Dr. Mitchell received his B.Sc. (Hons) in Computer Science from the University of Regina. From 1986 to 1989 he undertook M.Sc. studies in Computer Science at the University of Regina and the Allan Blair Cancer Clinic focused on the development of algorithms used in radiotherapy treatment planning and three-dimensional imaging of patient CT scans. In 1995, he received his Ph.D. in Medical Biophysics from the University of Western Ontario, where he developed novel medical image processing methods to improve visualization and analysis of multiple sclerosis (MS) lesions in MRI scans. Dr. Mitchell continued his research as a physicist at the London Health Sciences Centre (1995-2000), and in the capacity of Associate Scientist (1996-2000) at the Robarts Research Institute in London, Ontario. In addition to these roles, he was also a research associate (1996-1998) and Assistant Professor (1998-2000) in the Departments of Diagnostic Radiology and Nuclear Medicine at the University of Western Ontario. In 2000, Dr. Mitchell moved his lab to the University of Calgary, where he directs the Imaging Informatics research program.
Dr. Mitchell is a specialist in imaging-informatics and his research focuses on the development of new analytical techniques to extract information from digital medical images. These technologies aim to provide quantitative, objective, and reliable assessments of imaging data that improve the ability of clinicians to understand, diagnose, treat, and monitor diseases, including stroke, multiple sclerosis (MS), and brain tumors. His work has resulted in many publications and patents, and he is the recipient of numerous awards, including the prestigious Dr. Donald Paty Career Development Award in recognition of his contributions to MS research, as well as the Berlex Canada MS award. Dr. Mitchell is also Founding Scientist and Chief Scientific Advisor of Calgary Scientific, Inc., a spin-off company that commercializes the medical imaging technologies developed by his lab and facilitates the delivery of robust and accessible platforms incorporating these technologies to the broader medical community.
Dr. Mitchell's current research interests include the development of new algorithms to rapidly and reliably predict brain regions at risk during stroke, as well as the development of MRI-based markers to measure the effectiveness of new MS treatments in clinical trials. His group is also working on methods to predict the response of brain tumors to chemotherapy and radiation treatments using "texture" analysis of brain MRI.
Selected Publications:
Brown RA, Zhu H, Mitchell JR, "Distributed Vector Processing of a New Local Multi-scale Fourier Transform for Medical Imaging", IEEE T Med Imaging, Vol. 24, No. 5, 689-691, 2005.
Bristow MS, Simon JE, Brown RA, Eliasziw M, Hill MD, Coutts S, Frayne R, Demchuk AM, Mitchell JR, "Perfusion and Diffusion in Acute Stroke: Human Gray and White Matter Have Different Thresholds for Infarction", Journal of Cerebral Blood-Flow and Metabolism. 25:1280-1287, 2005.
Brown RA, Zlatescu M, Cairncross JG, Mitchell JR, "Texture Analysis for Non-Invasive Identification of Brain Tumor Genotype from MRI, Visualization, Imaging and Image Processing, ACTA Press, 480(116):459-464, 2005.
Hill MD, Mitchell JR, "Intelligence is a network worth preserving", Neurology, 66(4): 470-471, 2006.
Zabad R, Metz LM, Todoruk TR, Zhang Y, Mitchell JR, Yeung M, Patry DG, Bell RB, Yong VW, "The Clinical Response to Minocycline in MS is Accompanied by Beneficial Immune Changes: A Pilot Study", Multiple Sclerosis 13: 517-26, 2007.
Zhang Y, Zabad R, Wei X, Metz LM, Mitchell JR, "3T MRI Deep GM ‘Black T2' Correlates with Disability in MS", Multiple Sclerosis, epublished April 27, 2007.
Bjarnason TA, Drabycz S, Adler DH, Cairncross JG, Mitchell JR, "Applying the S-Transform to Magnetic Resonance Imaging Texture Analysis", to appear in the Fields Institute Communications Series, Pseudo-Differential Operators: PDEs and Time-Frequency Analysis, Rodino L, Schulze BW, Wong MW (eds.), 2007.
Brown, R., Zlatescu, M., Sijben, S., Roldan, G., Easaw, J., Forsyth, P., Parney, I., Sevick, R., Yan, E., Demetrick, D., Schiff, D., Cairncross, J. & Mitchell, J. (2007) Detecting Genetic Signatures in Oligodendroglioma Non-Invasively Using MR, Clinical Cancer Research (in press).
