Spotlight on Dr Timothy Bray, Consultant Radiologist and Honorary Clinical Lecturer

Each month we will interview a member of DoM Staff. This week we speak to Dr Timothy Bray, Consultant Radiologist and Honorary Clinical Lecturer

What is your current role, and what do you enjoy most about your job?

I am a consultant radiologist and imaging scientist based between the Centre for Medical Imaging (in the Division of Medicine) and the Hawkes Institute (Department of Computer Science). My research sits at the interface of radiology and computer science/engineering: I develop new techniques for acquiring and analysing magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans and translate them into clinical practice. I try to find creative ways to unlock the potential of MRI to give us the information we need to diagnose and treat patients better – a kind of ‘radiological engineering’! 

I particularly enjoy the fact that this ‘hybrid’ role allows me to both identify areas of genuine clinical need as well as actually develop the solutions, something that is typically difficult to achieve with the typical model of translation (where engineers develop the technology and radiologists evaluate / translate it). 

It is an exciting time to work in this area because artificial intelligence (AI) is allowing us to push the boundaries of what is possible, enabling us to acquire more detailed and more useful MRI scans in less time than would have been imaginable only a few years ago. 

What are you working on at the moment?

A large part of my work focuses on imaging of abnormal inflammation. Abnormal inflammation is a key pathological process in many human diseases, but our ability to interrogate it with imaging is still limited (and less advanced than diseases like cancer and neurological disorders). I am trying to solve this problem by developing AI-powered methods that allow us to ‘phenotype’ inflamed tissues in much more detail and so help us to better target treatment in individual patients.

I am also interested in developing new methods for whole-body MRI. MRI has the potential to give us extremely rich and detailed information about individual patients, and we now have the ability to scan the whole body in about an hour. However, this is still quite a long time for unwell patients who are in pain, and various compromises are needed to make this possible. To address this, I am developing AI-based methods that allow us to accelerate and improve whole-body MRI scans, with the ultimate aim of making these scans faster and more valuable for patients and doctors.   

What is your background, and how did you find your job in this field?

I have always been interested in physics and technology, as well as the diagnostic side of medicine. I am also quite a visual person and like looking at images, so radiology (and particularly MRI) was the perfect fit. I did my PhD in magnetic resonance imaging with Prof Margaret Hall-Craggs from 2015-18, and subsequently an NIHR Clinical Lectureship (2019-2022), during which I became interested in computational imaging when working with Prof Gary Zhang at the Hawkes Institute. I took up a consultant position at UCLH in 2022 with a research component funded by the 3Is BRC theme, and am now in the early stages of building a research programme focusing on the areas above. 

What are your interests outside work?
I enjoy art (oil painting), photography (particularly wildlife) and online chess. I also like to spend time in the garden and enjoy spending time with my wife and two children.