Joseph Manak, Ph.D., is Senior Director, Platform Technologies at Canon Medical Research USA, Inc. (CMRU). He also serves as acting Director for X-Ray advanced development and clinical research and collaborations in North America.
Joe has worked in the medical imaging field for more than 20 years, receiving a B.Sc. in Physics from IIT in Chicago and a Ph.D. in Experimental Particle Physics from the University of Notre Dame. After receiving his degree, he spent 13 years working as a researcher on X‑ray systems at the General Electric Global Research Center in upstate NY. During that time, Joe worked on interventional X‑ray, mammography, radiography and CT screening security systems. His work included development of novel X‑ray system concepts, detectors, image processing techniques and reconstruction algorithms.
In May 2014, Joe moved to CMRU to direct the X‑ray research and development programs where he led efforts to determine the root cause of X‑ray image quality and dose issues, and the improvement of 2D and 3D image quality. In 2016, Joe’s responsibilities were expanded to Director of the Clinical Research Group at CMRU, where he worked on execution and defining the tasks of CMRU’s clinical research programs in North America and supporting research planning globally.
In Joe’s current capacity he supervises the combined hardware and software engineering teams at CMRU. These teams develop imaging chain hardware and software for CT, PET, MR and Interventional systems and support the development of a common system architecture using shared hardware and software components used across all imaging modalities.