Bruce H. Hasegawa, PhD, 1951-2008.

Bruce H. Hasegawa, PhD, 1951–2008 O n May 22 the nuclear medicine and medical physics communities lost an extraordinarily brilliant scientist, talented teacher, devoted mentor, and, above all, a dear and true friend. Bruce Hasegawa, PhD, died at the age of 56 at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) Medical Center a few days after suffering a massive stroke. His death is a great loss to the many students and scholars he mentored and the many colleagues he assisted and with whom he collaborated during his scientific journey. During his short yet productive life Bruce imparted a tremendous legacy that not only touched the lives of many colleagues but also affected the lives of many patients who benefited from his research successes. Bruce grew up on an almond farm (to which he affectionately referred as the ‘‘nut farm’’) on the outskirts of Fresno, CA. Coming out of the Clovis school system with perfect SAT scores, Bruce entered California State University at Fresno, majoring in physics and mathematics. After earning his bachelor’s degree, he received a master’s degree in mathematics at Cal State Fresno. When his advisor told him he was destined to have a great future in finite Abelian group theory, he became depressed and decided to apply his background in physics and mathematics to medicine. In 1974, he entered the graduate program in physiology and biophysics at the University of Washington in Seattle. He left the University of Washington without completing his degree and eventually returned to Fresno, where he taught undergraduate mathematics, physics, and biology at his alma mater. In 1978 Bruce set out once again to earn his PhD. His career began to take shape as he worked toward his master’s degree in radiology sciences at the University of Colorado Health Science Center (HSC) in Denver. His project involved development of scintillation camera systems. From Colorado he would venture farther east to earn a PhD in medical physics in 1986 under the mentorship of Charles Mistretta, PhD, at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Bruce then moved to Cedars–Sinai Medical Center in Beverly Hills, CA, as director of medical imaging physics. Although the position was financially rewarding, he also wanted research opportunities and intellectual stimulation. The Hollywood lifestyle was not very appealing, and Bruce left after 3 mo to join the Radiology Department at UCSF as an assistant professor in residence. He rose through the academic ranks to the position of professor in residence and director of the Physics Research Laboratory. He joined the Nuclear Engineering Department at the University of California–Berkeley (UCB) as an associate professor in residence in 1997 and advanced to the position of professor in residence. He was deeply involved through his teaching and research with the joint UCSF/UCB Graduate Program in Bioengineering and was a cochair of the joint UCSF/UCB Graduate Group in Bioengineering for several years. Throughout his educational and career journey Bruce left a trail of significant contributions to the field of medical imaging. He produced nearly 200 publications and conference proceedings and 13 book chapters. While at the University of Colorado HSC in the early 1980s, he sought to improve on earlier multipinhole collimator work by evaluating a 12-pinhole collimator for cardiac SPECT imaging (1). This work was ahead of its time, and it was not until recent years that the multipinhole SPECT has been successfully applied in small animal imaging and evaluated for human applications. Above all, Bruce is perhaps best known for his pioneering work on multimodality imaging, combining CT with SPECT to provide an overlay of radiotracer functional distribution on an anatomic image (2–5). Using equipment borrowed from GE, Bruce placed a single-head SPECT camera in close proximity to a CT ring. Using the same patient bed, he took sequential scans with the CT and SPECT and then developed the algorithms to coregister the images. This new concept was rapidly accepted by all major equipment manufacturers, and dualmodality SPECT/CT cameras were marketed and sold throughout the world. This technology revolutionized the way we view and interpret images and led to the development of PET/CT and PET/MR instruments. Bruce and colleagues even initiated work on a SPECT/MR device. It is interesting to note that Bruce was not the lead or senior author on 3 of the initial 4 SPECT/CT publications. He modestly minimized his credit for the discovery and majedphoto.com