Sebastian Theilenberg

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), MRI hardware, magnetic field control, B₀ shimming, dynamic multi-coil shimming, pulse sequence programming

Dr. Sebastian Theilenberg is an Associate Research Scientist with over ten years of MRI research experience.

He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Bonn, Germany, in 2017, where he investigated MR image contrasts based on the viscoelastic properties of human brain tissue. This work included the design and realization of an MR safe apparatus to introduce a small disturbance of the brain tissue of in-vivo subjects, MR phase imaging to measure the resulting tissue motion, and human subject studies to evaluate this method.

When Dr. Theilenberg joined the MR Science Lab as a Postdoc in 2017, he shifted his research focus towards hardware development, specifically B₀ magnetic field control using the dynamic multi-coil technique (DYNAMITE). He designed and built a compact 31-channel multi-coil array enabling the generation of linear and non-linear image encoding fields and high-order B₀ shimming in a novel head-only scanner. Hardware developments like these will hopefully enable novel engineering approaches in MRI, which in turn could increase the accessibility of MRI in the future.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Sebastian volunteered with the Columbia Researchers against Covid in the New York Presbyterian Hospital, and during the initial vaccination effort of Columbia University. He is an active member of the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, which includes reviewing abstracts for the annual conference, as well as giving educational talks and volunteering as moderator.

PhD       in Physics, Dr. rer. nat., University of Bonn, 2017

MSc       in Physics, Dipl. Phys., University of Bonn, 2012

Honors Branch Scholarship, Bonn-Cologne Graduate School of Physics and Astronomy 2013-2015

Columbia University Office for Postdoctoral Affairs spotlight during National Postdoctoral Appreciation Week 2021

ISMRM Educational Stipend 2017-2019

Travel Stipend, German Academic Exchange Service, ESMRMB 2015

Theilenberg S, Shang Y, Ghazouani J, et al. Design and realization of a multi‐coil array for B₀ field control in a compact 1.5T head‐only MRI scanner. Magnetic Resonance in Medicine 2023;90:1228–1241.

Juchem C, Theilenberg S, Shang Y, Ghazouani J. Magnetic Resonance Imager with Coils for Arbitrary Image Space and Fabrication Thereof (WO 2021/022252 A1). Published February 4, 2021.

Kofahl A-L, Theilenberg S, Bindl J, et al. Combining rheology and MRI: Imaging healthy and tumorous brains based on mechanical properties: Kofahl et al. Magnetic Resonance in Medicine 2016;78:930–940.