Dr. Kocharian earned his M.S. in Solid States Physics in 1977 and his Ph.D. in Crystallography and Crystallophysics in 1982 from the Yerevan State University in Armenia (former USSR). In 1996 he completed a two-year retraining program in Medical Physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and in 2002, he completed a Fellowship in MRI at the Mayo Graduate School of Medicine in Rochester, Minnesota. Subsequently, in 2002, Dr. Kocharian took a position of MR Systems Engineer at GE Healthcare in Waukesha, Wisconsin. In 2006, he began working at St. Paul Radiology as a Medical Physicist (St. Paul, Minnesota). In 2014, Dr. Kocharian joined the Houston Methodist Hospital as Senior Imaging Physicist supporting diagnostic imaging practice, including research projects, accreditation and annual surveys of MRI, CT, R&F, PET/CT and mammography systems, MRI safety, optimization of clinical protocols and image quality.

Dr. Kocharian is a certified Diagnostic Medical Physicist by the American Board of Radiology, and certified MR Safety Expert by the American Board of MR Safety. He is a member of national and international professional organizations, including the International Union of Crystallography, the American Association of Physicists in Medicine, where he serves as a member of the MRI Subcommittee, the American College of Radiology, and the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, where he served as a member of the Safety Committee (2015-2018).

Dr. Kocharian has extensive experience in MR systems and RF coil design. He holds patents for body transmit-receive RF coils and developed a small extremity transmit-receive RF coil with further implementation into clinical practice. He has participated in a number of clinical trials, including a multi-institutional research study using diffusion tensor imaging in patients diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Currently Dr. Kocharian supports the MR imaging of a multi-institutional research study for mild traumatic brain injuries sponsored by GE Healthcare and the NFL.