Description of Research Expertise

Research of the Laboratory for Structural, Physiologic and Functional Imaging is aimed at quantitatively characterizing tissue microarchitecture and its relationship to physiology and function by means of spatially resolved nuclear magnetic resonance in animals and humans.

A major focus of the Laboratory is the development of new methods for the quantitative assessment of metabolic bone disease by means of the MR-based "virtual bone biopsy" and image-based computational biomechanics. A related area of concentration is the reduction to practice and translation to the clinic of novel quantitative solid-state proton and phosphorus MRI techniques for the study of bone matrix and mineral properties. A further line of work focuses on the quantification of systemic vascular disease via functional MRI-based methods including time-resolved blood flow, vascular compliance and venous blood oximetry with applications to the peripheral and central vascular system

Other areas of active in-house and collaborative research comprise the further development of novel non-Cartesian imaging techniques for cancer staging in the abdomen and chest, research aimed at the study of gene expression in mouse models of disease using novel micro-CT approaches, the study of neuronal architecture in mouse models of spinal cord injury by means of diffusion diffraction NMR, the development of MRI techniques to map internal strains of the intervertebral disc, and the development of novel RF coil hardware for ultra-high field MRI. Investigators in the lab have also recently embarked on a program aimed to develop and implement methods for imaging with real-time feedback control applied to fMRI of drug addiction and treatment.