DR. WHO
Dr. Burger and Susanna welcomed their first child, Sarah, in
1985. Although they knew it would be tough living on a resident’s
salary, he said, they decided that Susanna would move into a full-
time mom position for their family. “I was definitely moonlighting
during that time,” he said. “But we made it work.”
After finishing his residency 1987, he wanted another view
on the specialty and decided that a fellowship at the University of
Iowa in Iowa City was just the place, where a young guru in MRI
imaging had set up shop.
“MRI was just coming on the scene as the up-and-coming di-
agnostic imaging tool,” he said. “And there was a young, bright
neuroradiologist whose area of expertise was MRI [Dr. William
T.C. Yuh, M.S.E.E.] and he was kind of a guru in MRI and he was at
Iowa, so I wanted to work with him. Plus, Iowa was just a fantastic
place. They had good equipment, good people, good subspecialties.”
Their second daughter, Allison, was born there in 1987, and
after his fellowship in Iowa, the family returned to Louisville for
good in July 1988. He was quickly welcomed at Louisville Radiol-
ogy Associates and became the first neuroradiologist to practice at
Norton Hospital.
His group consisted of just five radiologists when he joined in
1988, but would soon grow. By 1994, they had changed their name
to Diagnostic Imaging Alliance of Louisville (DIAL). While their
practice is independent and they are not Norton employees, they
have cared for patients at Norton Brownsboro, downtown Norton,
two Norton imaging centers. The staff has grown to over 20 members
with multiple subspecialties in imaging.
“It’s been really great watching the group grow. I have a really
good group of partners,” he said. “The young people we hire are all
from some of the best programs in the country. It’s a really good
group of people to work with.” He was a partner at DIAL for 31
years and just recently stepped back from that role in June 2019 as
he prepares for retirement in the coming years.
Dr. Burger’s work now entails a combination of procedures and
reading imaging studies. He currently performs myelograms and
lumbar punctures four days a week, performing anywhere from five
to 10 procedures daily. In a typical day, he is also reading anywhere
from 30 to 50 additional imaging scans for other patients. He en-
joys getting to do these procedures as it gets him face-to-face with
patients, which can be a refreshing change from spending hours at
a time in a basement reading room.
“With procedures, I still get to talk to patients and see patients.
What keeps it fresh for me is that patient contact. And every patient
is different. It never gets old.”
Dr. Burger also says that he enjoys working through diagnostic
puzzles. “We’re all problem-solving and trying to come up with a
diagnosis, trying to help other doctors solve the problem, trying to
help them figure out what’s wrong with their patient,” he said. “That’s
always a good thing. Working with the clinicians that I work with
at the hospital—neurosurgeons, spine surgeons, neurologists—that
keeps it interesting.”
In the ever-evolving landscape of radiology, there is never a
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