TR&D Core Research
TR&D 1: Rotating Frame Imaging Methods
Main Article: Rotating Frame Imaging Methods
| This TR & D project deals with the development of novel MRI techniques based on nuclear spin relaxation dynamics that exploit both endogenous and exogenous contrast agents. The methods proposed in this TR&D will address pathologies such as Arthritis, Alzheimer’s Disease, and cancer. Over the past several years, the resource originated these techniques and has been working on further developments and clinical translational aspects.
|
TR&D 2: Perfusion Imaging
Main Article: Functional Imaging
| This TR & D focuses on the use of MRI to study tissue function, and builds upon almost two decades of work using arterial spin labeling (ASL) to measure tissue perfusion. Blood flow is a critical pathophysiological parameter and disorders of blood flow are responsible for a large proportion of medical morbidity. Noninvasive imaging of blood flow is also a promising biomarker with a broad range of applications in biomedicine. While blood flow is the key parameter in the evaluation of vascular disorders, blood flow is also an increasingly important parameter in evaluating neoplastic disease and particularly the effects of anti-angiogenesis therapies. Finally, in the brain and other organs, changes in blood flow are coupled to changes in regional metabolism, allowing blood flow to be used as a biomarker for normal tissue function. The ASL method was initially conceived by this Regional Resource, and continues to provide opportunities for technology development and translation to clinical applications. ASL perfusion MRI remains one of the few MRI contrast mechanisms for which the physiological and biological significance is well understood.
|
TR&D 3: Dynamic Radial MRI
Main Article: Dynamic Radial MRI
| This TR & D project focuses on the development of novel dynamic MR imaging methods focusing on radial k-space sampling. The success and translational impact of this effort as part of TR & D 1 in previous years has lead to its inclusion as an independent TR & D.
|
TR&D 4: Optical Imaging
Main Article: Optical Imaging
| Starting with seminal contributions in the late 1980s, past and present group members of the CMROI Optical Imaging Core (TR & D 4) have repeatedly made pioneering contributions to the field of diffuse optics. The group recognized early-on that near-infrared (NIR) light diffuses in tissue and that diffuse optical spectroscopy (DOS) can be used to track deep tissue hemodynamics in brain and muscle. Later, members of the group made critical theoretical and experimental contributions to problems in diffuse optical tomography (DOT) and towards the development and application of dynamical diffuse optical probes, i.e. diffuse correlation spectroscopy (DCS), whereby temporal fluctuations of diffusing light fields are used to characterize tissue blood flow, Now the group is active combining the optical methods with other modalities such as ultrasound, MRI and PET, and the group is vigorously pushing in vivo clinical applications in brain hemodynamics and metabolism, in stroke and brain injury monitoring, in muscle function monitoring, in tumor biology, in monitoring head and neck cancer treatment, and in breast tumor detection and characterization.
|
Last modified April 6, 2009 3:52 pm /
