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Overview

Lab Members

Ravinder Reddy / Mitchell Schnall / Ari Borthakur / Hee Kwon Song / James E. Baumgardner / Jerry D. Glickson / J. Bruce Kneeland / Virginia M.-Y. Lee / Harish Poptani / H. Ralph Schumacher / John Q. Trojanowski

About the Core

The group aims to develop and further multinuclear magnetic resonance technology for studying structure, dynamics, biochemistry and patho-physiology of biological tissues. We have been advancing the development of MR technology involving 23Na, 31P and 17O MRI. We are progressing in an effort to create novel pulse sequences to obtain structural and spin-dynamical information not available in routine MR sequences. Specifically, proton spin-locking based imaging sequences for high fields, integrated indirect 17O MRI technology for studying oxidative metabolism in animals/humans and novel filters based on projection reconstruction strategies for computing the dynamics of contrast enhancement with high temporal resolution represent the core initiatives our investigations are designed to embrace. We look to implement research based on these technologies, along with appropriate models for analysis, as well as software and hardware modifications, in studies on animal models and in the clinical setting. We work closely with collaborators to develop experimental protocols for studying cartilage, brain, and breast with an emphasis on diagnosing and/or monitoring diseases such as arthritis, cerebral ischemia, tumors, breast cancer, and Alzheimer’s disease.

Also see the Laboratory for Multinuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging website.

Active Research

Simultaneous high spatial and high temporal resolution dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI

Dynamic contrast enhanced MRI is widely applied to study tumor vascularity in the settings of diagnosis and response to therapy. The requirement for fast, high-resolution imaging has created a technical challenge. The use of angle interleaved projection reconstruction imaging has previously been proposed to allow the trade off between spatial and temporal resolution to be made during reconstruction. This allows reconstructions of variable spatial and temporal resolutions to be achieved. This technique results in limited spatial resolution of the highest temporal resolution reconstruction. Our goal is to implement and validate the use of temporally selective radial filters in a key hole like reconstruction that will provide images with high temporal and spatial resolution simultaneously and will accurately depict the time intensity curve.