Clinical Radiology includes faculty members who apply advanced imaging techniques to diagnose and manage a wide range of medical conditions, including cardiology, oncology, pulmonary diseases, pediatrics, and neurology. By combining clinical expertise with state-of-the-art imaging modalities, our clinician-scientists optimize patient care and guide treatment decisions. The theme integrates patient-centered care with translational research, implementing cutting-edge imaging technologies in clinical practice. Many faculty members have a strong focus on clinical trials to test and implement new imaging approaches that improve patient outcomes.
View our Clinical Radiology publications
People
Ian Alberts
Primary Location: BC Cancer Research Centre
Francois Benard
Primary Location: BC Cancer Research Centre
Dr. François Bénard is a Professor of Radiology at the University of British Columbia, a Distinguished Scientist at BC Cancer and holds the BC Leadership Chair in Functional Cancer Imaging. He is currently the Senior Executive Director of the BC Cancer Research Institute, as well as Associate Dean, Research at UBC, Vancouver, Canada.
As a clinician scientist, his research interests are in PET, nuclear medicine, cancer imaging and targeted radiopharmaceutical therapy. His research focuses on the development of novel radiopharmaceuticals for cancer diagnosis and therapy, and their translation and application to improve the care of cancer patients through a thriving research program in imaging and radionuclide therapy.
His expertise covers pre-clinical and clinical research related to the evaluation of novel radiopharmaceuticals, from the design phase, radiopharmacological characterization, preclinical testing and clinical studies ranging from phase 0-1 studies to multicenter clinical trials. In his career, he advanced new radiopharmaceuticals from bench to the clinic, and developed extensive experience with the regulatory process to obtain market authorization for new radiopharmaceuticals.
Philipp Blanke
Primary Location: St. Paul’s Hospital
Dr. Philipp Blanke is an Associate Professor at the UBC Department of Radiology and Staff Radiologist at St. Paul’s Hospital, Vancouver. He is the Director of the Cardiac CT Core Lab at St. Paul’s Hospital, which supports clinical trials in the field of transcatheter heart valve replacement and repair in regard to CT imaging for screening and follow up. His major research interest are cardiac CT for planning and optimization of heart valve interventions with a focus on investigational devices. Dr. Blanke received his medical degree and residency training from the University of Freiburg, Germany. He was previously a staff radiologist at the University of Wuerzburg were he successfully underwent the German habilitations process (Dr. med. Dr. habil.). He completed a fellowship in Advanced Cardiac Imaging at UBC/St. Paul’s Hospital before joining as a staff physician.
Claire Gowdy
Primary Location: BC Children’s Hospital
Dr. Gowdy is actively involved with national and international bodies working to harmonize the staging and response criteria for childhood cancers, in particular, Hodgkin lymphoma using functional imaging techniques such as PET/CT.
Manraj Heran
Primary Location: BC Children’s Hospital and Vancouver General Hospital
Dr. Heran graduated from the University of British Columbia medical school in 1996. He completed his diagnostic radiology residency training at the University of British Columbia
program in 2001, and obtained his FRCPC in Diagnostic Radiology the same year. Having completed fellowships in Pediatric Radiology (BC Children’s Hospital, 2001), Vascular and Interventional Radiology (Vancouver General Hospital, 2002), as well as in Diagnostic Neuroradiology (Duke University Medical Center, 2003), he returned to a joint staff position between Vancouver General Hospital and BC Children’s Hospital in 2003. Now in his twenty third year on staff, Dr. Heran is Head of the Section of Interventional Neuroradiology at Vancouver General Hospital, and a pediatric interventional radiologist at British Columbia’s Children’s
Hospital. Dr. Heran is internationally recognized in both fields and has served as the President of the Society for Pediatric Interventional Radiology (SPIR) twice. With cross appointments in Neurology, Neurosurgery, Spine, and Pediatrics, he is heavily involved in all aspects of medical education and clinical research. Areas of specific interest include the diagnosis and management of vascular malformations, spinal intervention, traumatic brain injury, interventional neuroradiology (including acute stroke and other ischemic cerebrovascular disease), and orbital radiology and intervention.
Darren Klass
Vancouver General Hospital, UBC Hospital
Dr. Darren Klass is an established radiologist with extensive expertise in interventional radiology. He currently serves as an Interventional Radiologist at Vancouver Coastal Health, a position he embraced in 2011. He also acts as the Medical Head of the MRI division and specializes in interventional oncology, aortic intervention, PVD, venous disease, and venous access. His subspecialties are locoregional tumor therapy, MR angiography, and treatment of venous disease. Dr. Klass is also an Interventional Radiologist with Vancouver Imaging, a physician-led private practice. The practice provides teleradiology, subspecialist image interpretation, interventional radiology and CT/MR protocol consulting. To complement the hands-on aspects of his work, he also dedicated to his role as Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia.
Jonathon Leipsic
Primary Location: St. Paul’s Hospital and Diamond Health Care Centre
Jonathon A. Leipsic, M.D., F.R.C.P.C. M.S.C.C.T is Professor and Chair of Radiology and Professor of Cardiology with the University of British Columbia and previously held a Canada Research Chair of Cardiac Imaging. Dr. Leipsic has over 850 peer reviewed manuscripts in press or in print, over 300 scientific abstracts, and editor of 2 textbooks. He is also past President of the Society of Cardiovascular CT (2015-2016) and was awarded its Gold Medal in 2019 and was recently named to the prestigious Top 1% most impactful scientist designation by the Web of Science for 6 years in a row from 2019-2024.
David Liu
Primary Location: Vancouver General Hospital
Dr. David Liu is a Royal College Board-Certified Interventional Radiologist at the False Creek Health Centre. He is also an Interventional Radiologist at UBC and serves as a Radiology Consultant for the Canadian Armed Forces. He received his Medical Doctorate from the University of Toronto in 1998 and completed his Radiology Residency from the University of British Columbia in 2003. He has his Fellowship in Interventional Radiology from the Northwestern University. He has published work in several areas relating to venous health including: non-invasive imaging, inferior vena cava filter management, and the advanced management of blood clots. His most recent award includes the Young Investigator Award from the Canadian Association of Radiologists (CAR) in recognition of his research contributions.
Karen Lyons
Primary Location: BC Children’s Hospital
Patrick Martineau
Primary Location: BC Cancer Research Centre
John Robert Mayo
Primary Location: Vancouver General Hospital
Nicolas Murray
Primary Location: Vancouver General Hospital
Dr. Murray completed his medical training and radiology residency at Laval University, Quebec City, Canada, prior to completing a fellowship in Emergency and Trauma imaging at the Vancouver General Hospital. He is a clinical associate professor in the University of British Columbia Department of Radiology.
Timothy Murray
Primary Location: St. Paul’s Hospital
Savvakis Nicolaou
Primary Location: Vancouver General Hospital
Dr. Savvas Nicolaou is the Head of Radiology at Vancouver General Hospital, as well as a Professor of Radiology at the University of British Columbia. He completed his medical degree at the University of Toronto, and residency in Diagnostic Radiology at University of British Columbia. Using state-of-the-art imaging technology, Dr. Nicolaou is investigating ways to develop faster, safer, and more sensitive methods for diagnosing patients in the acute care setting. Major focus of research is on Ultra Low dose techniques in the acute setting, Dual Energy CT in the acute setting, Polytrauma Imaging, Brain Perfusion in trauma and role of MRI in the acute setting and AI in the acute setting.
Rolf Petter Tonseth
Primary Location: BC Cancer Research Centre
After obtaining a Bachelor of Science in Biology from the University of Victoria, Dr. Petter Tonseth completed medical school at UBC in 1988. The following decade involved working as a general practitioner in various locations including many coastal BC communities, the Canadian arctic, and Australia. He returned to BC to take up a full-time position in the Functional Imaging Department at the BC Cancer Agency in 2011, reporting oncologic PET/CT, and more recently began working regularly at the Nuclear and Molecular Medicine Department in St.John’s Newfoundland. Dr. Tonseth holds academic appointments at both UBC and Memorial University and is the Director of the UBC International Outreach Program and Education Lead for Undergraduate Ultrasound at UBC.