Dr. Gabby Joseph PhD, PStat

Dr. Gabby Joseph is Professional Researcher and Co-Director of the Clinical & Translational Musculoskeletal Imaging (CTMI) group at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), a position she has held since July 2003 (advancing from Staff Research Associate to Research Specialist to Professional Researcher). She is based at the Department of Radiology, UCSF School of Medicine, 185 Berry Street, Building B, San Francisco, CA 94107. She is a PhD-trained scientist and ASA-accredited professional statistician (PStat), with over 20 years of experience leading federally funded research. She is also affiliated with the Musculoskeletal Quantitative Imaging Research (MQIR) group at UCSF. At IAG, Image Analysis Group, she serves as Scientific Advisor, with expertise in Biostatistics and Osteoarthritis Clinical Research.

Dr. Joseph’s primary research focus is musculoskeletal imaging, with particular depth in osteoarthritis (OA) imaging biomarker development, quantitative MRI and CT, predictive modelling, and clinical study design. Her methodological expertise encompasses MRI T2 relaxation time mapping, T1ρ mapping, quantitative cartilage composition assessment, semi-quantitative whole-organ scoring, AI and machine learning applications in clinical imaging (XGBoost, Elastic Net, Random Forest), longitudinal data analysis (GEE, mixed models, multivariable and logistic regression), and advanced biostatistics. She has extensive expertise in the Osteoarthritis Initiative (OAI), one of the largest longitudinal cohort studies in musculoskeletal research.

Her translational research bridges imaging methodology and clinical trial endpoints in OA. She has led studies on imaging biomarkers of cartilage degeneration, meniscal pathology, subchondral bone, intramuscular and subcutaneous fat, and joint effusion as predictors of disease progression and treatment response. She has contributed to AI applications in cartilage and OA imaging (Skeletal Radiology 2022), machine learning prediction of incident radiographic knee OA over eight years (Osteoarthritis and Cartilage 2022), and the Soft Tissue-RADS framework development. She has been mentored by Dr. Charles McCulloch, lead biostatistician of the Osteoarthritis Initiative, and is proficient in longitudinal data analysis.

Dr. Joseph has served as Co-PI or Co-Investigator on multiple NIH-funded studies including R01, F31 (NIH F31 as graduate student), and F32 (NIH F32 as postdoctoral scholar) grants at UCSF, totaling multi-million-dollar funding. Her research has contributed imaging analysis and biostatistical expertise to the Osteoarthritis Initiative (OAI), a multicenter NIH-funded prospective cohort study. She has contributed to studies with direct clinical trial relevance, including assessment of imaging features of response to weight loss interventions (96-month OAI data), denosumab response in giant cell tumor (radiomics from OAI data), and the TOARP (Tool for Osteoarthritis Risk Prediction) 8-year prediction model.

Dr. Joseph has over 7,000 total citations, she has 131+ peer-reviewed publications and an i10-index of 100–101. ResearchGate lists 226 publications with 6,488 citations. She has been trained and funded by NIH F31 and F32 fellowships. She has trained and mentored 38+ medical residents, fellows, and postdocs across UCSF. She is an ad hoc reviewer for 25+ journals including Osteoarthritis & Cartilage, Radiology: AI, and Scientific Reports. She has been invited speaker at OARSI, ISMRM, and UCSF symposia. Her work has appeared in Osteoarthritis and Cartilage, Skeletal Radiology, Journal of Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Arthritis Care & Research, and Scientific Reports, among others.

Dr. Joseph received her B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley (1999 to 2003), where she also worked as an Undergraduate Researcher at the Orthopedic Biomechanics Lab (August 1999 to August 2003). She obtained her PhD in Bioengineering from UC San Francisco (2005 to 2009), with a focus on developing imaging methods for early detection of osteoarthritis and disc degeneration using MRI T2 relaxation time mapping. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Musculoskeletal and Quantitative Imaging Research group at UCSF (January 2010 to September 2015), supported by NIH F32, focusing on cartilage T2 as an early biomarker for OA and longitudinal data analysis under the mentorship of Dr. Charles McCulloch. She joined UCSF as Staff Research Associate in July 2003 and has progressively advanced to her current role as Professional Researcher.