Joseph Maldjian, M.D.

Joseph A. Maldjian, MD, is Professor of Radiology at UT Southwestern, Vice Chair of Faculty Affairs in the Department of Radiology and Director of the Advanced NeuroScience Imaging Research (ANSIR) Lab. His clinical interests involve bringing novel imaging methodologies and advanced analysis methods into the clinical setting.

What I really appreciate about neuroradiology at UT Southwestern is the perfect partnering of clinical and research excellence.

After receiving his bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from Princeton University, Dr. Maldjian earned his medical degree from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in Newark. He completed his residency training in diagnostic radiology at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, and then received advanced training in neuroradiology through a two-year fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia.

Prior to joining the faculty at UT Southwestern, Dr. Maldjian served as a Professor of Radiology and Biomedical Engineering at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Prior to that, he held faculty appointments at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, and at New Jersey Medical School.

Research

Dr. Maldjian’s research team has been instrumental in bringing arterial spin-labeling (ASL) into routine clinical practice. This noninvasive method “tags” arterial blood water through a process of magnetic inversion, making it possible for a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner to detect the “magnetized” blood flowing through brain tissue. He has also developed fully automated means for processing, archiving, and analyzing these images; as well as images obtained using functional MRI, diffusion tensor imaging, positron emission tomography, and magnetoencephalography (MEG). Dr. Maldjian’s research lab maintains a data processing resource that can handle large amounts of neuroimaging data and provide an interface to an array of commonly used software platforms.

His pickatlas paper has been recognized as among the 100 most cited articles in imaging literature, and in the top 10 in neuroimaging literature. In 2017 he received the Academy for Radiology & Biomedical Imaging Research Distinguished Investigator Award, and in 2019 he was inducted as an inaugural fellow of the American Society of Functional Neuroradiology. He has done research in sports-related mild traumatic injury, including serving as MPI on several NIH-funded studies looking at subconcussive impacts in youth and high school football players using MRI, MEG, cognitive measures, and detailed head impact data.  He is currently Principal Investigator of an NIH-R01 studying noninvasive determination of molecular markers in gliomas using MRI and deep learning.

Dr. Maldjian is an active member of national and international organizations, including the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, the American Society of Neuroradiology, the American Society for Functional Neuroradiology, the American College of Radiology, the American Board of Radiology, and the Radiological Society of North America.  He is alo a founding member of the Texas Society of Neuroradiology, established in 2024.

Robust editorial activity

In addition to authoring more than 150 peer-reviewed publications and over 15 additions to textbooks, Dr. Maldjian is a reviewer for multiple academic journals, including Radiology, Neuroradiology, Neurology, Neuroimage, Clinical Neuroradiology, American Journal of Neuroradiology, Annals of Biomedical Engineering, Neuroinformatics, and Journal of Computer Assisted Tomography. He also regularly participates in a variety of NIH study section review panels.