Publications

This paper describes an adaptive approach to regularizing model-based reconstructions in magnetic resonance imaging to account for local structure or image content. In conjunction with common models like wavelet and total variation sparsity, this content-aware regularization avoids oversmoothing or compromising image features while suppressing noise and incoherent aliasing from accelerated imaging. To evaluate this regularization approach, the experiments reconstruct images from single- and multi-channel, Cartesian and non-Cartesian, brain and cardiac data. These reconstructions combine common analysis-form regularizers and autocalibrating parallel imaging (when applicable). In most cases, the results show widespread improvement in structural similarity and peak-signal-to-error ratio relative to the fully sampled images. These results suggest that this content-aware regularization can preserve local image structures such as edges while providing denoising power superior to sparsity-promoting or sparsity-reweighted regularization.

Research on gender and health, including research conducted among Black men who have sex with men (BMSM), has primarily focused on how gender norms and roles shape healthcare engagement. Here we advance that work by demonstrating how a broader theorization of gender, particularly one that moves beyond gender norms and performance to incorporate structures such as the healthcare system and the labor market, can facilitate an understanding of how gender affects preventive healthcare seeking among BMSM, particularly the uptake of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), a promising approach to alleviate HIV disparities. This article is based on a year-long ethnographic study conducted in New York City with BMSM (n = 31; three interviews each) and community stakeholders (n = 17). Two primary findings emerged: (1) the labor market systematically excluded the men in our sample, which limited their ability to access employer-sponsored healthcare. Such discrimination may promote overt demonstrations of masculinity that increase their HIV vulnerability and decrease healthcare seeking, and (2) healthcare systems are not structured to promote preventive healthcare for men, particularly BMSM. In fact, they constrained men's access to primary providers and were usually tailored to women. Applying a structural, gendered lens to men's health-in addition to the more frequently researched individual or interpersonal levels-provides insight into factors that affect healthcare seeking and HIV prevention for BMSM. These findings have implications for the design of policies and institutional reforms that could enhance the impact of PrEP among BMSM. Findings are also relevant to the management of chronic disease among men more broadly.