The Department of Radiology houses the Multi-Modality Imaging Research Center, which provides over 14,000 square feet of research space dedicated to advancing the role of imaging in medicine. The research space provides for image analysis labs, wet labs for contrast medium development, hot labs for radiopharmaceutical research, and various image acquisition laboratories.
The image analysis labs enable research in computer-aided diagnosis in breast imaging, chest radiography, skeletal radiography, computed tomography, SPECT, PET, reconstruction techniques, and vascular imaging. The center houses the Human Imaging Research Office, the MRI Research Center, the Optical Imaging Core Facility, and other image-based laboratories.
The Committee on Medical Physics also includes an NIH-supported center for the development of EPR imaging for in vivo physiology. This is a development center for a new magnetic resonance imaging technique using electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) rather than nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) as its basis.
High-resolution (sub-millimeter) images with quantitative sensitivity to oxygen concentrations, tissue pH, and body fluid diffusion constants are obtained using this technique.