Director of Musculoskeletal Informatics and Assistant Professor
Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and Sports Medicine
Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School

Brief Bio:
I received my BS (2004) and MS (2008) degrees in Material Science and Engineering from Iran University of Science & Technology, followed by a PhD in Biomedical Engineering (University of Toledo, OH), and Master of Medical Sciences in Clinical and Translational Investigation (HMS 2016). I did my postdoctoral fellowship in Orthopedic Surgery at Boston Children’s Hospital (2013-2015) and then joined the faculty at BCH/HMS right after my fellowship. I also have several years of experience working in industry as a materials science engineer from 2004-2009.

Who have been your mentors?
I have been extremely fortunate to work with AMAZING mentors throughout my career including Vijay Goel, PhD and Dean Demetropoulos, PhD (PhD mentors), and Martha Murray, MD and Braden Fleming, PhD (postdoc mentors). They all have made significant impact on my career.

What are your specific research areas and expertise?
The primary focus of my research is to develop data-driven tools that can help with the diagnosis and treatment planning of joint injuries (primarily knee and hip). To achieve this, we study how our joints and soft tissue structures change during skeletal growth and maturation and what factors result in pathologic joint and tissue development. We also have a strong focus on developing data processing tools which can result in large databases (e.g., imaging, treatment outcomes) by processing existing clinical data collected as part of routine clinical care. For example, at our institute we have high volume clinics for hip and knee injuries with more than two decades of electronic medical records. We try to use our data processing pipelines to generate large clinical and imaging databases (e.g., registries) which can then be leveraged to better study risk factors and treatment outcomes of these common injuries. We then use those insights to develop risk prediction or treatment planning tools.

What are you currently working on?
We are currently working on several projects related to studying normal and pathologic development of knee soft tissue structures (e.g., ACL, menisci, and cartilage) and hip bony morphology including evaluating the effect of intrinsic (e.g., genetics) and extrinsic (e.g., physical activity) factors. We are also working on translating a couple of our data processing tools that we have developed to assists with postoperative care of patients with ACL surgery and clinical care of young patients with hip disorders.

What has been the biggest challenge for you in your research?
The biggest challenge for our research is lack of multi-center large-scale longitudinal imaging data on children and adolescents’ joints and musculoskeletal tissue. There are several national studies (e.g., OAI and UKBiobank) which have provided unique resources to study musculoskeletal diseases of older adults (e.g., arthritis) but there is nothing for younger patients. This is extremely important as a lot of degenerative diseases have roots in early skeletal development and maturation, and we know very little about them. This is a missed opportunity.

What project(s) are you looking forward to in the near future?
There are two projects that I am very much looking forward to further expanding in the near future. The first one is an MRI-based biomarker to track ACL healing after surgery and to predict the surgical outcomes, including risk of reinjury. In collaboration with Braden Fleming, PhD (Brown University, Rhode Island Hospital) we have validated this imaging biomarker to predict the outcomes of newly developed Bridge Enhanced ACL Restoration (BEAR). We are now working on clinical validation of our MRI pipeline in predicting the outcomes of ACL reconstruction.
The second project is focused on developing joint specific growth charts that we plan to share publicly. Over the past few years, we have developed several robust multi-modal data processing pipelines which we have used to process large amounts of clinical data (e.g., medical images). We are now trying to use those data to develop joint specific growth charts (similar to what we have for height and weight but for joint morphology). For example, we have recently developed a comprehensive database of 3D hip morphology, with 40+ anatomical indices, from a cohort of 24,000+ hips (with not documented skeletal pathologies) from childhood to early adulthood. This is a unique database which can help to better identify hip pathologies at each stage of skeletal growth.

What do you want to do next in your career?
We run a data-science bootcamp (Musculoskeletal Informatics Bootcamp) in my lab focused on providing hands-on training to STEM and MD students on the applications of data science in MSK research and clinical care. I would love to expand our bootcamp to include residents and clinical fellows as I strongly believe that AI/ML tools would soon be routinely used in clinics and knowing how they work and what are their pros and cons would help our clinicians to better leverage them to improve clinical care.

What advice would you give young investigators in the field?
I have two pieces of advice: 1) Always think about what you want to achieve in the near future (e.g., next 5-10 years) and then see which path and what resources would take you there, and 2) Never stop learning and always try to reevaluate and update your plans based on the new things you have learned.

When you’re not in the lab, what do you like to do for fun?
I enjoy watching movies with my wife and kids along with doing DIY projects at home.

What resources would you like to see available from the ORS Tendon Section?
I would love to see more focus on translational research, in particular collaboration opportunities to collect and share standardized clinical data from different institutes to facilitate the development of tools for injury risk prediction and treatment planning.

How can we follow you?
Lab Website | Twitter: @akiapour and @MSK_Data | ResearchGate | LinkedIn