Dr. Grant Larson Receives SAR Trainee Research Award

Dr. Grant Larson, a resident in the University of Minnesota Medical School Department of Radiology was awarded the Society of Abdominal Radiology (SAR) 2020 Trainee Research Award for his project, “Does type of preparatory diet have impact on hepatic metabolic activity in patients with sarcoidosis undergoing 18F-FDG Cardiac PETCT?” 

This award is presented to a trainee whose abstract, submitted prior to the SAR Annual Meeting, is ranked based on the quality of the study. Winners receive $1,000 to put toward travel to the conference where they present the research as an oral presentation.

In Dr. Larson’s study, he found that a short-term ketogenic diet resulted in increased FDG in the blood pool among patients undergoing routine whole-body PET/CT for surveillance of sarcoidosis. This could have important implications for our understanding of glucose metabolism and the optimization of nuclear medicine protocols. Anil Chauhan, MD, Assistant Professor of Radiology was Larson’s mentor for the research project. 

“I'd like to thank all the co-authors for their work on this project, including Drs. Froelich, Steinberger, Ozutemiz, Koksel, and our outstanding medical student, Kent Van Note. I'd especially like to thank Dr. Chauhan, for his great ideas and guidance.” Said Dr. Larson.