
Thomas Lang, PhD
Thomas F. Lang, PhD, is a Professor in the Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging at the University of California, San Francisco, where he has been a faculty member since 1994. Dr. Lang obtained his BA in Chemistry at the University of Chicago in 1983, and completed his PhD in Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley in 1990, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship in Radiology Imaging at UCSF in 1992. Over the course of his 27 year career at UCSF, Dr Lang has served the University in multiple areas in addition to his role in Radiology, including as Chair of the Conflict of Interest Committee since 2010 and as Associate Dean for Research and Presidential Professor in the School of Dentistry between 2015-2020. Dr Lang has served in leadership roles outside of UCSF including as a member of the NIH Skeletal Biology and Regeneration Study Section, Musculoskeletal Alterations Team Lead at the National Space Biomedical Research Institute, Associate Editor of the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research and as an Editorial Board Member of the FASEB Journal.
The focus of Dr Lang's Research is focused on development and application of quantitative analytic methods centered on bettering our understanding of two major chronic problems that affect the growing elderly population: osteoporosis, a main cause of age-related fractures, and sarcopenia, a loss of skeletal muscle strength, endurance and function. The aim of this research is to characterize skeletal density, geometry and indices of strength from volumetric CT scans of the hip and spine, as well as similar imaging based methods to quantify skeletal muscle anatomy and function. With the growth of his research group, Dr. Lang and his group have carried out a robust program in methods development, integrating density and structured analysis with serial image registration to improve sensitivity for detecting changes in longitudinal measures, and finite element modeling in order to understand how density and structure measures of bones are related to bone strength, stiffness, and fractures.
Interests: Osteoporosis, computed tomography, bone mineral density measurements, CT and PET/CT imaging in the study of the human biology of the musculoskeletal system, bone aging