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Biomedical
Imaging
Areas, Opportunities and Resources
A new multidisciplinary Center for Technology-Guided Therapy has
been created between the Engineering School and the School of
Medicine. This formalizes what had been a close and productive
relationship over the past decade. In simplest terms,
technology-guided therapy (TGT) involves using information to guide
the application of a therapeutic process to diseased areas while
minimizing the exposure of non-diseased areas to that process. While
simply stated, clinically-useful TGT involves a large number of
complex processes, requiring seamless interaction between experts in
a number of fields. Inherent in technology-guided therapy are four
processes:
a) define the spatial extent, location and structure of the
diseased area and the location, function and topology of the normal
anatomy about the diseased areas.
b) guide the delivery of therapy in space and time. These
therapies could be surgery, local chemical delivery, delivery of
thermal disruption, systemic drug delivery or external or internal
radiation.
c) track the tissue changes in time and space during the course
of therapy, providing quantitative feedback as to the efficacy of
the therapy.
d) provide tools for patient follow-up to allow accurate
assessment of disease remission or re-occurrence.
Within those four major areas, there are a number of
technologies to be developed by this center and its collaborators
Imaging
Research – Vanderbilt University Institute of Imaging Science (VUIIS)
www.vuiis.vanderbilt.edu
VUIIS
provides outstanding opportunities for imaging research at different
levels and in different modalities. A new 46,000 sq ft under
construction will open in Spring 2006 which will house all the VUIIS
facilities, staff, faculty and trainees. The Center for Small Animal
Imaging provides a comprehensive array of imaging resources for
state-of-the-art studies of small animals in vivo using MRI,
X-ray CT, optical and nuclear imaging techniques. The current
imaging Center is housed in 4000 sq ft of space that has been
completely renovated to house new instruments (described below) .
The facility is supported by an expert faculty dedicated to
developing new and improved imaging methods and their applications,
laboratory spaces for animal preparation and monitoring, computing
resources for image analysis and processing, and an electronics
workshop for development of instrumentation and other technical
support.
The inventory
of major equipment currently available in the Center comprises;
[a] a
9.4T 21 cm horizontal bore Varian MRI/MRS spectrometer equipped
with a 12 cm (i.d.) imaging gradient insert, suitable for the
most sophisticated and experimentally challenging MRI/MRS
studies in mice and rats.
[b] a 7T
16 cm horizontal bore Varian MRI/MRS spectrometer equipped with
10 cm (i.d.) imaging gradients, well suited for routine,
high-resolution imaging studies of mice.
[c] a
4.7T 31 cm horizontal bore Varian MRI/MRS spectrometer equipped
with 21 cm (i.d.) imaging gradients for imaging larger animals,
as well as a 12 cm (i.d.) imaging gradient insert for the most
demanding imaging protocols.
All the
MR systems are equipped with an array of surface and volume
radiofrequency coils for imaging and multinuclear spectroscopy.
[d] an
Imtek MicroCAT II CT scanner for small animals providing a
100x50 mm field of view with 40 micron resolution using a
4096x4096 pixel detector and is fully equipped with accessories
to permit gated imaging and a range of resolutions.
[e] a
Concorde Microsystems “Focus” microPET scanner. This system uses
24,192 LSO detector elements and has an animal port diameter of
22 cm with an axial field of view of 8 cm and a reconstructed
resolution of <2 mm.
[f] a
Xenogen IVIS 200 imaging system for in vivo studies of
bioluminescence and fluorescence.
[g] a
Visualsonics 40 Mhz real-time ultrasound system for imaging.
[h] a
0.5T (2.5cm bore) Maran Benchtop Relaxometer; Proton relaxation,
diffusion and imaging of solutions and phantoms
The Center
has adjacent rooms for animal handling, anesthesia, recovery and
surgery, biochemical assays and an electronics workshop.
A 4.7T, 60 cm
vertical imaging system for non-human primates will be installed
early in 2006.
The Center
for Human Imaging provides a dedicated 3T research MRI scanner
(Philips Achieva) equipped with multinuclear and parallel imaging
capabilities. Adjacent to the 3T there are laboratory spaces for
metabolic measurements, exercise physiology and measurements of
muscle function, studies of brain function by Near Infra Red
Topography (using a Hitachi ETG-400 system) and electrophysiology
(using a Neuroscan 64 channel system capable of recording EEG in the
3T magnet). A 7T Philips human MRI scanner will be delivered early
in 2006.
VUIIS also
hosts an extensive computer image analysis laboratory, consisting of
SGI and Sun workstations, a Linux cluster and several Macintoshes.
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