RSNA 2025 Outstanding Researcher

Groundbreaking researcher, international leader in PET and molecular imaging and effective leader, Farrokh Dehdashti, MD, is the Drs. Barry A. and Marilyn J. Siegel Professor of Radiology at the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, where she also serves as the senior vice chair and director of the Division of Nuclear Medicine and co-Leader of the Oncologic Imaging Program of the Siteman Cancer Center.

“Dr. Dehdashti’s pioneering research and steadfast leadership in molecular imaging have helped shape the role of PET in modern oncology,” said RSNA President, Umar Mahmood, MD, PhD. “Her visionary work in advancing FES-PET as a tool for improving cancer diagnosis and treatment has had a lasting impact on both clinical care and research, making her a most deserving recipient of this year’s Outstanding Researcher Award.”

A national and international leader in advancing PET for both clinical practice and research, Dr. Dehdashti has led translational research and clinical PET implementation and practice with an enormously positive impact on the advancement of PET as a clinical tool for oncology. Dr. Dehdashti was the earliest investigator worldwide to have studied the uses of [¹⁸F] fluoroestradiol (FES) as a method for in vivo quantification of estrogen receptor (ER) expression by PET, a predictive biomarker for ER-targeted therapies, and to characterize metastatic/recurrent ER-positive breast cancer.

Her leadership in this field made her a natural choice to lead a multicenter ECOG-ACRIN trial, which has completed accrual, and is anticipated to demonstrate the reliability of FES-PET for predicting response of metastatic breast cancer to endocrine therapy. Dr. Dehdashti’s work with FES was of critical importance for the recent approval of FES by the FDA. She has been a key contributor to new procedure guidelines and appropriate use criteria for FES-PET in the clinic.

Beyond FES, Dr. Dehdashti has contributed early-phase research for a whole host of other radiopharmaceuticals for PET, including agents for imaging androgen receptors, progesterone receptors, somatostatin receptors, chemokine receptor 2, human epidermal growth factor receptor 3, very late antigen-4, hypoxia, cell membrane glycerophospholipid, proliferation, apoptosis and DNA damage and repair. Her recent work using the PET progesterone imaging agent, [¹⁸F]FFNP demonstrated the ability of this agent to assess functional ER and predict, with high sensitivity and specificity, response to endocrine therapy, similar to her prior work using metabolic flare to predict response in breast cancer.

Dr. Dehdashti has over 40 book chapters and review papers and nearly 170 peer-reviewed research papers. She has been highly successful in obtaining peer-reviewed funding to support her work that includes grants from NIH, DOD and DOE.