Patrick Barnes

Patrick Barnes (born February 3, 1948) is an American pediatric radiologist and pediatric neuroradiologist. He is Emeritus Professor of Radiology at the Stanford School of Medicine. He also has served as the Chief of the Section of Pediatric Neuroradiology and the Inaugural Director of the Pediatric MRI and CT Center at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. He is known for his contributions to the field of pediatric neuroradiology, particularly in the development and implementation of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for the evaluation of pediatric neurological conditions.

Barnes is a co-founder and past president of the American Society of Pediatric Neuroradiology (ASPNR) and has held leadership roles in various professional societies, including the American Society of Neuroradiology (ASNR) and the Society for Pediatric Radiology (SPR).

Early life and education Barnes was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. He was valedictorian of his high school class in Vinita, Oklahoma, in 1966. He completed his undergraduate education at the University of Oklahoma, where he studied Letters/Pre-Medicine from 1966 to 1969. He earned his Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine in 1973, graduating with honors and being inducted into the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society.

Barnes completed his residency in diagnostic radiology at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center in 1976, followed by a fellowship in pediatric neuroradiology and cardiovascular radiology at Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. He was subsequently certified by the American Board of Radiology in diagnostic radiology with added qualification in neuroradiology. This period marked the beginning of his long-standing academic focus on pediatric and developmental neuroimaging. During this period, his clinical and research activities were centered at Boston Children's Hospital, where he played a role in the expansion of pediatric neuroradiology and the early clinical translation of magnetic resonance imaging for neurological disease in children.

In 2000, Barnes joined the Stanford academic medical system as a senior faculty member in the Department of Radiology at Stanford University Medical Center. He was appointed Inaugural Chief of Pediatric Neuroradiology and Inaugural Director of the Pediatric MRI and CT Center at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Stanford, He also co-founded the hospital's Child Abuse SCAN Team, contributing to imaging-based clinical pathways for evaluating suspected child abuse and traumatic brain injury. Across his career, Barnes has been recognized for pioneering the clinical translation of advanced MRI technologies, leadership in collaborative multicenter research, and sustained mentorship of future leaders in pediatric radiology and pediatric neuroradiology. Working with colleagues in Oklahoma, he demonstrated that MRI could be used as a reliable and non-invasive method to screen children for spinal dysraphism, directly contributing to MRI replacing myelography as the standard imaging technique for pediatric spine evaluation.

At Boston Children's Hospital, Barnes and collaborators published the first report using MRI to characterize vascular anomalies in children. This work helped establish MRI as a primary modality for evaluating complex vascular and head and neck conditions in pediatric patients and enabled multidisciplinary models of care. In collaboration with Robert Mulkern, Barnes pioneered rapid imaging techniques using fast spin-echo methods, reducing imaging times and improving feasibility for sedation and anesthesia in children.

These efforts led to one of the first comprehensive textbooks on pediatric neuroradiologic MRI, MRI in Pediatric Neuroradiology (Wolpert & Barnes, Mosby-Year Book, 1992), followed by the widely used training text Pediatric Radiology: The Requisites (Blickman, Parker, & Barnes Elsevier, 2009).

At Stanford, Barnes collaborated with Kristen Yeom and the Roland Bammer research group to introduce advanced diffusion and motion-correction techniques for pediatric brain imaging, further reducing the need for sedation and anesthesia. This work received multiple Caffey Awards for Best Scientific Paper from the Society for Pediatric Radiology.

Pediatric Neuro-Oncology Imaging Barnes contributed centrally to the development of MRI-based imaging in pediatric brain tumor care. At Boston Children's Hospital, he collaborated with pediatric oncologists, neurosurgeons, and radiation oncologists, including teams at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, to establish one of the earliest multidisciplinary Pediatric Brain Tumor Working Groups. This collaboration later contributed to the creation of the Pediatric Brain Tumor Consortium, supported by the National Cancer Institute. Barnes also contributed to early clinical implementation of image-guided stereotactic radiotherapy, enabling more precise targeting of tumors and improved sparing of normal brain tissue. He further established the clinical value of advanced MRI techniques, including MR spectroscopy and perfusion imaging, for distinguishing treatment-related changes and hemorrhage from tumor progression in children. At Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Stanford, Barnes collaborated on studies demonstrating that specific MRI features, including apparent diffusion coefficient patterns, can predict histological subtypes of medulloblastoma.

Fetal MRI Barnes played a key role in early clinical development of ultrafast fetal MRI. At Boston Children's Hospital, he collaborated with Deborah Levine of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center to establish fetal MRI as a complementary modality when prenatal ultrasound suggested CNS abnormalities.

Neonatal Neuroimaging From 1993 to 2021, Barnes authored or co-authored more than 25 publications on neonatal neuroimaging.

At Stanford, he continued outcome-based neonatal imaging research, including large multicenter investigations with the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Neonatal Research Network. After serving as a pediatric radiology consultant to child protection teams in Oklahoma and Boston Children's Hospital, he co-founded the Child Abuse SCAN Team at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Stanford in 2008.

Barnes published extensively on ethical and evidentiary issues in imaging suspected abuse, arguing that radiologic findings such as subdural hemorrhage, retinal hemorrhage, and encephalopathy cannot reliably establish abuse or its timing in isolation.

Honors and awards Barnes has received the John A. Kirkpatrick Jr. Faculty Teaching Award from Harvard Medical School, the S.B. Rossiter / Senior Radiology Faculty of the Year Award (x3) from Stanford University Medical Center, and the Herman Grossman Lecturer award from Duke University Medical Center.

In 2018, Barnes was honored as Emeritus Professor of Radiology (Pediatric Radiology – Neuroradiology) at Stanford University Medical Center.

Selected publications