Center for Technology Guided Therapy

The field of Technology Guided Therapy (TGT) combines a number of different medical disciplines, including Medical Imaging, Image Registration, Image Segmentation, and Surgical Data Collection and Processing.

Ongoing Activities of the Surgical Naviga-tion Apparatus Research Lab (SNARL)

Preoperative imaging provides three-dimensional patient-specific information about anatomy, function and the location of both diseases and healthy structures. Preoperative imaging consists of tomographic sets such as Computed Tomography (CT), Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and Single Photon Emission Tomography (SPECT). Each of these modalities provides different information about the structure and/or components of the patient's body.

Specific applications of MR tomograms include MRA (Magnetic Resonance Angiograms) which are MR images made in such a fashion as to be sensitive to flowing blood and functional MR (fMR) which are MR images which are sensitive to the changes in the brain associated with increased use. In CT, a relatively new technique called spiral scan is allowing for much faster imaging. This speed of imaging means that contrast agent can be injected into the patient's blood stream and the vascular bed of interest can be imaged before the contrast washes out. This is known as CT Angiography or CTA.

Researchers: Ong, Glisson, DeLisi

Lab web page: SNARL*

Dr. Galloway: VUBME

Dr. Miga: VUBME