Karyn e Chappell

Background

About Karyn e Chappell

Dr. Karyn Chappell is a senior Research Fellow at University College London working in the Department of Translational Neuroscience and stroke. Before she was a Postdoctoral Research Radiographer at Imperial College London. Karyn's interest is how preventative healthcare can empower people to live long, happy lives with pain free movement. Her latest research focuses on improving imaging and quantifying measures for Parkinson's disease. Previously she worked on quantifying orientated collagen in joints with low-field MRI. During her PhD she designed a method to harness the magic angle artifact providing structural information about tendons, ligaments and meniscus similar to Diffusion Tractography Imaging (DTI) in the brain. Her technique Magic Angle Directional Imaging (MADI) has been realised in vivo utilising a novel low-field system built in Mechanical Engineering at Imperial College London. The team is changing the face of musculoskeletal imaging by developing a quantifiable metric of joint health produced by a low cost, low power, portable, sustainable MRI system. Prior to this Karyn held a Postdoctoral Scholarship in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery at Stanford University. Her work involved pre-clinical imaging and longitudinal human studies following ACL reconstruction. Her focus was on developing early outcome measures of posttraumatic osteoarthritis. Karyn worked on optimising zero echo time imaging for surgical planning for revision ACL surgery with augmented reality and quantitative muscle measures to assess early changes to the quadriceps and hamstrings after ACL reconstruction. She chased labelled mesenchymal stem cells injected into joints to determine how long and where they ended up to determine the effectiveness of stem cell therapy. Karyn's future plans are to gain funding to explore lower limb joint pain in middle aged women. She is putting together a research team to explore this and other women's health problems with MRI. Currently many of these areas are under researched meaning that there is no evidence on which to base clinical practice. Karyn's research will narrow the gap between lifespan and healthspan ensuring we can keep moving pain free for longer so they can maintain a better quality of life.