Innovation in pediatric medicine doesn’t always look like what you’d expect. Sometimes it’s a headset. Sometimes it’s a quieter MRI machine. And sometimes, it’s thousands of tiny zebrafish swimming in a lab.
In this episode, three leaders from Children’s Hospital Los Angeles share how emerging technologies are transforming the way we treat children.
1. Virtual Reality as Sedation-Sparing Medicine (Dr. Jeffrey I. Gold)
Virtual reality in pediatric care is far more than distraction. As Dr. Gold explains, immersion changes cognitive load and neurological response. Children aren’t just watching something, they’re transported.
The results are:
- reduced pre-procedural anxiety
- lower pain perception
- in some cases, complete elimination of sedation
Procedures like transnasal endoscopy that once required anesthesia can now be performed with VR alone. This reduces side effects, avoids repeated anesthesia exposure, and improves patient and parent experience.
Dr. Gold is also exploring biosensor-integrated VR, bringing real-time physiological data (heart rate variability, EEG, stress markers) into immersive environments for objective, adaptive interventions.
2. Low-Field MRI: Less Radiation, Less Anesthesia (Dr. John Wood)
High-field MRI systems dominate imaging, but they struggle in areas with air interfaces like lungs and GI tract. Dr. Wood explains how CHLA’s Siemens FreeMax low-field MRI system is changing that.
Key breakthroughs:
- Real-time cardiac imaging without general anesthesia
- High-quality lung imaging without CT radiation
- Potential replacement of fluoroscopy with MRI fluoroscopy
- Improved fetal cardiac imaging
For children under seven, imaging often requires sedation, or CT radiation. Low-field MRI may reduce both.
Radiation risk compounds over decades. Dr. Wood notes that even a single abdominal CT may raise leukemia risk in children. Eliminating unnecessary exposure is a long-term investment in child health.
3. Zebrafish & The Future of Pediatric Cancer (Dr. James Amatruda)
Childhood cancers are biologically different from adult cancers. They are often genetically simpler, but rooted in developmental errors.
Zebrafish offer a powerful model:
- 85% of human disease genes have zebrafish counterparts
- Transparent embryos allow direct visualization of tumor development
- Rapid drug testing across hundreds of models
- Ability to recreate specific pediatric cancer mutations
With 70–80,000 fish currently housed, CHLA is building a large-scale research engine to accelerate therapy discovery.
Dr. Amatruda’s goal is clear: increase the current 75% cure rate while reducing toxic long-term side effects.
Key Topics Discussed:
- VR for pain and anxiety management
- Sedation-sparing medical procedures
- Low-field MRI vs high-field MRI
- Radiation risks in pediatric imaging
- AI-assisted MRI reconstruction
- MRI-guided interventional cardiology
- Fetal cardiac imaging advancements
- Pediatric cancer genetics
- Zebrafish as translational research models
- Drug discovery acceleration in rare cancers
About Dr. Jeff Gold:
Jeffrey I. Gold, PhD, is a Professor in the Departments of Anesthesiology and Pediatrics at the Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California.
Dr. Gold, a licensed clinical psychologist, is director of the Pediatric Pain Management Clinic within the comprehensive multidisciplinary Comfort, Pain Management and Palliative Care Program in the Department of Anesthesiology Critical Care Medicine. He also is the director of the Children’s Outcomes, Research, and Evaluation (C.O.R.E.) program, director of the Children’s Hospital – Yo San University Pediatric Acupuncture Program, and faculty with the pediatric psychology specialization within the USC University Center of Excellence in Developmental Disabilities Mental Health Services at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.
Dr. Gold has specialized in the assessment, treatment, and clinical investigation of acute and chronic pain in children, adolescents, and adults with various chronic medical illnesses, such as sickle cell disease and chronic pain conditions. After graduating with his doctoral degree in clinical psychology (1999), Dr. Gold completed a research fellowship at the National Center for Posttraumatic Stress in Boston and later a clinical post-doctoral fellowship in the Departments of Hematology/Oncology and Psychiatry at the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland. The following year, he served as the project director for the Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Research Program of the VA San Francisco Health Care System.
From June 2000 to October 2001, Dr. Gold was the project director for the Cancer Pain Research Program of the VA Palo Alto Health Care System. Dr. Gold joined the USC faculty in 2002 and has been serving on Children’s Hospital Los Angeles’ Institutional Review Board since 2004 and was recently appointed as vice-chair of the IRB.
About Dr. John Wood:
Dr. John Wood graduated in from UC. Davis (Electrical Engineering) in 1984 and received his MD/PhD (Bioengineering) from the University of Michigan in 1994. He performed his residency and fellowship in Pediatric Cardiology at Yale and joined Children’s Hospital Los Angeles/USC Keck School of Medicine in 1999. Dr. Wood is the director of cardiovascular MRI and specializes in the MRI assessment of congenital heart disease as well as noninvasive assessment of iron burden by MRI.Dr. Wood has been studying the cardiovascular consequences of hemoglobinopathies for almost a decade. He is one of the pioneers of MRI-based cardiac and liver iron measurements but is also studying oral chelation strategies in animals and humans. He was the principle investigator for the NIH-sponsored Early Detection of Iron Cardiomyopathy Trial whose goal is to identify earlier markers of cardiac dysfunction. Dr. Wood also has funded projects examining pancreatic and pituitary iron burden by MRI and their functional correlates. Recently, Dr. Wood received a ARRA Challenge grant to study the role of iron overload and other factors in sickle cell vasculopathy and is exploring the links between abnormal red cell mechanics and vascular dynamics in the hemoglobinopathies.
About Dr. James Amatruda:
James F. Amatruda, MD, PhD, is the Chief of the Division of Pediatric Hematology-Oncology, Director of the Cancer and Blood Disease Institute (CBDI), and the Alfred E. Mann Family Foundation Chair in Cancer Research at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA). He is also tenured Professor of Pediatrics and Medicine at the USC Keck School of Medicine and the Associate Director for Pediatric Oncology in the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Biochemical Sciences from Harvard University and his MD, PhD from Washington University School of Medicine. He did internship and residency training in Internal Medicine at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, MA, followed by fellowship training in Medical Oncology at Dana-Farber/Partners Cancer Care in Boston, MA. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Leonard Zon at Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School. From 2005-2019, Dr. Amatruda was on the faculty of UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, TX.
Dr. Amatruda is a physician-scientist with a primary research and clinical focus on solid tumors of childhood including sarcomas, germ cell tumors and Wilms tumor. His lab has developed zebrafish models of genetic subtypes of pediatric solid tumors to better define their biology and to use that knowledge to identify and validate novel approaches for improved therapies. He has had long-standing leadership positions in the Children’s Oncology Group, serving as Chair for the Germ Cell Tumor Biology Committee and the Rare Tumors Biology Committee. Dr. Amatruda is an Editor of the journal Disease Models & Mechanisms. He also serves on the Scientific Advisory Boards of the William Guy Forbeck Foundation, the Sam Day Foundation, the Pablove Foundation, and Curing Kids Cancer.
