About Us > Governance > Mark Henkelmen

Mark Henkelmen, PhD

Director, Mouse Imaging Centre, Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Ontario

Dr R Mark Henkelman is a Professor in the Departments of Medical Biophysics and Medical Imaging at the University of Toronto. He is the Director of the Mouse Imaging Centre (MICe) at the Hospital for Sick Children.

Dr Henkelman received a PhD in Medical Biophysics from the University of Toronto in 1973, a Master of Science in Theoretical Physics from McMaster University in 1970, and a Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Theoretical Physics from the University of Toronto in 1969. Over his career, he has been involved with numerous professional associations and boards at the local, national and international level as well as numerous editorial boards.

Dr Henkelman was Vice President Research at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre from 1989 to 1999. During his tenure at Sunnybrook, he was instrumental in raising the level of external funding for the Sunnybrook Research Institute from $1 million to over $30 million per year with an associated staff of 350 people.

Over the past eight years, Dr Henkelman's major focus has been the establishment of the Mouse Imaging Centre (MICe) at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. The Mouse Imaging Centre includes a variety of imaging modalities: high-field magnetic resonance imaging microscopy with the capability of imaging multiple mice up to 16 at the same time, ultrasound biomicroscopy for cardiac assessment and embryonic studies, micro-computed tomography for bony structures and vascular arborization of fixed specimens, and optical techniques for three-dimensional conformation and patterns of gene expression in embryos. With these imaging tools, MICe screens randomly mutagenized mice to look for phenotypes that represent human diseases. Also, MICe takes established models of human disease in mice and uses imaging to follow the progression of disease and response to treatment over time. Imaging makes a major contribution to phenotyping genetic variants and to characterizing mouse models. MICe is a major new centre which became operational in 2002 and is staffed by an exciting team of about 25 investigators with expertise in imaging techniques, computer science, imaging processing, developmental biology, mouse pathology, etc.

Prior to starting the Mouse Imaging Centre, Dr Henkelman's research was focused on various aspects of magnetic resonance imaging such as interventional MRI, contrast mechanisms, magnetization transfer imaging, and the characterization of artifacts. These studies resulted in a series of approximately 180 papers on MR.

Dr Henkelman is a co-author on 10 patents, over 276 publications, 498 abstracts and numerous presentations worldwide. He holds a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Imaging awarded by the Government of Canada. In 1998, he was awarded a Gold Medal from the International Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine "for pioneering scientific contributions to magnetic resonance in medicine and biology" in particular for his "many contributions to contrast mechanism, motion compensation, and interventional system". The ISMRM is the major worldwide scientific society which represents Magnetic Resonance Imaging research and which has 5,000 members. In 2005, he was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a University Professor, the highest honor the University of Toronto awards to its faculty. In 2008, he was awarded the Robert L. Noble Prize by the National Cancer Institute of Canada for excellence in cancer research. And when he can get away from the lab, he likes to go canoeing and kayaking.