Welcome to the websites of the elastography group @ Charité Berlin
Elastography is the imaging-based measurement of soft tissue viscoelastic properties for clinical diagnosis and biomedical research.
Our activities include research and development in all essential aspects of elastography technology and applications to body tissue in health and disease.
We use time-harmonic waves in magnetic resonance elastography (MRE), ultrasound elastography and optical elastography across scales, species and entities.
Our research interest stems from the observation that while palpation is remarkably sensitive to disease, expensive imaging hardware often falls short in detecting diffuse disease and providing early warning of aggressive lesions. In response, our team has taken leadership roles in several research consortia dedicated to biophysical medical imaging. The overall goal is to translate our evolving understanding of the critical role of physical tissue properties in health and disease into practical clinical biomarkers.
We are part of larger consortia dedicated to the research and development of quantitative imaging markers for cardiovascular disease, cancer and matrix directed imaging:
GRK2260 BIOQIC, FOR5628 MRE in Cancer, SFB1340 Matrix-in-vision, SPM4.0
Contact
Department of Radiology, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin,
t: +49 30 450 539 058
ingolf.sack(at)charite.de

Awards
2021-11-11 - Helge Herthum
Helge Herthum receives the QUEST Prize for Reproducibility in Science, endowed with 1000 euros.
2021-09-21 - Jing Guo and Ingolf Sack
Jing Guo and Ingolf Sack receive the Family Klee Foundation Innovation Award. The prize is awarded every two years by the German Society for Biomedical Engineering (DGBMT) and is endowed with €10,000.
2019-05-06 - Stephan Marticorena Garcia
1st place of the MRE-Study Group (ISMRM) student award for Stephan Marticorena Garcia.
2015 - Heiko Tzschätzsch
Heiko Tzschätzsch from the Elastography working group won the 1st prize of the Student Award of the International Tissue Elasticity Conference 2015 in Verona for the invention of tomoelastography. The prize was endowed with £300!
2015 - Sebastian Hirsch
Sebastian Hirsch from the Elastography group defended his doctorate on pressure-based MRE in the Faculty of Natural Sciences at HU-Berlin with summa cum laude.
2015 - PD Dr. Michael Scheel and Anthony Romano
Michael Scheel and Anthony Romano as lead authors of the article “In Vivo Waveguide Elastography: Effects of Neurodegeneration in Patients with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis” received the 'Best Paper Award' of the Naval Research Labs, endowed with 1000 US$!
2015 - Dr. Jing Guo
Jing Guo has received the 3rd prize of the Elastography Study Group of the ISMRM 2015, endowed with 140 US$. Title of her presentation: In vivo multifrequency MR elastography for the assessment of portal hypertension before and after transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunt (TIPS) implantation.
2015 - Dr. Jing Guo
Dr. Jing Guo from the Elastography Group of the Charité has won the prestigious Speed Lecture Award of the Bionale 2015!
In just 3 minutes, Dr. Guo was able to explain the highly complex topic of brain elastography to a wide audience, focusing in particular on the connection between the viscoelastic properties of our brain and possible pathological changes. The Speed Lecture Award is endowed with 1000 euros.
2014 - Selcan Ipek-Ugay
The prestigious GMDS Medical Informatics Award of the German Society for Medical Informatics, Biometry and Epidemiology e.V. (GMDS) goes to Berlin this year! This prize is awarded to the best final thesis in medical informatics in German-speaking countries.
The medical informatician Selcan Ipek-Ugay from the Elastography of Radiology working group (Head: Prof. Ingolf Sack) received this year's GMDS sponsorship award with her master's thesis “Development of fully automatic evaluation algorithms for time-harmonic multifrequency liver ultrasound elastography”!
2014 - Andreas Fehlner
The physicist Andreas Fehlner from the Elastography working group in Radiology (Head: Prof. Ingolf Sack) has received a doctoral scholarship from the Hanns-Seidel Foundation for his work in MR elastography of the brain!
2012 - Heiko Tzschätzsch
Physicist Heiko Tzschätzsch from the Elastography working group in Radiology (headed by Prof. Ingolf Sack) has been awarded this year's scientific prize of 2500 euros by the German Society for Ultrasound in Medicine (DEGUM). The award recognizes his pioneering developments in cardiac ultrasound elastography and non-invasive cardiac pressure measurement using acoustic waves (Tzschatzsch et al. Ultrasound Med Biol 2012;38(2):214-222)).
2010 - Thomas Elgeti
Gerald Pohost JCMR Best Manuscript Award 2009: Second Place (Cardiac MR Elastography: Comparison with left ventricular pressure measurement)
Coolidge Award 2010 (GE Innovation Award endowed with 7500 €)
“Cardiac MR elastography: from vision to implementation of non-invasive cardiac pressure measurement”
2008 - Jens Würfel
ISMRM 2008 Poster award (honorably mentioned) (MR elastography reveals tissue degeneration in multiple sclerosis)
2006 - Dieter Klatt
Poster award German section of the ISMRM 2006 (Noninvasive determination of hepatic stiffness by planar steady state free precession MR elastography)