Dianna D. Cody

Biography

Dr. Cody joined MD Anderson Cancer Center in 2000 after spending nearly 20 years in various capacities at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, MI. She now holds the rank of Professor with tenure, is the Director of Clinical Operations for the Department of Imaging Physics, and functions as Deputy Department Chair. Dr. Cody’s recent accomplishments include being awarded two in-kind research grants for dual-energy CT investigations; one has resulted in a recent provisional patent filing, and the other has resulted in a handful of competitive awards for the graduate student leading the work. Dr. Cody is very active in her professional society, the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM). She co-chairs an active CT Working Group which has been extremely productive, and she is a member of several high profile task groups and committees focused on CT physics. Dr. Cody is a regular speaker at the annual Radiological Society of North America conference, which is the leading international meeting related to the field of radiology. She is past chair of the UT MD Anderson Cancer Center institutional Conflict of Interest Committee, and has been active in the UTMDACC Women Faculty programs.

Research Interest

Her current research is mainly in the area of dual energy CT applications. New technology available commercially provides tools that can be used to identify specific material components within relevant body regions. Dr. Cody’s research team is using this approach to differentiate small calcified deposits in the brain (typically due to aging) from small hemorrhages, which can occur in the cancer population for a number of reasons (such as treatment side effects). Since a sizeable proportion of the patient population is also on anti-coagulant therapy, this can be a high impact clinical condition to decipher.