IMAGING RESEARCH CORE FACILITY

Director: Christopher A. Flask, PhD
Assistant Professor, Radiology
chris.flask@UHhospitals.org

Imaging Research Center home page

Small Animal Imaging Center Instrumentation

MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING AND SPECTROSCOPY

Overview

Currently, small animal magnetic resonance imaging is being done on a Siemens Sonata 1.5T human MR system in the Department of Radiology. The clinical system has been modified for small animal imaging applications with custom receiver coils and modifications to pulse sequences.

Three additional MRI scanners have been purchased and will be available for use in the small animal imaging center in 2004. The center is currently under construction in the sub-basement of Wearn and scheduled for completion in the summer of 2004. Two of these systems are 7.0T and 9.4T Bruker Biospec superconducting in vivo imaging/spectroscopy systems. These systems provide the high resolution, high SNR capabilities needed for small animal imaging applications. These systems also provide ECG, respiratory gating capabilities for motion-sensitive examinations, high-resolution imaging of the brain, and/or heartbeat-synchronized ultra-fast imaging. Broadband excitation and receive-chain components as well as multiple independent receiver chains provide capabilities for advanced multi-nuclear (1H /19F/13C/23Na/2D/31P) imaging and spectroscopy capabilities.

A full-body human 4.0T scanner will also be part of the imaging center. This system will offer the advantages of increased SNR/resolution as compared to current clinical systems. The system will be equipped with Siemens Syngo to provide a standardized software platform with the flexibility for research applications. With these advantages, the 4.0T system will be available for use on pre-clinical animal studies as well as clinical research studies on human test subjects.

Availability

The 1.5T scanner is currently available for scanning purposes. Contact Chris Flask (see below) for scheduling. This instrument is part of the small animal imaging facility and as such is treated as a university resource. Researchers from all departments and their industrial colleagues are welcome to develop projects and protocols that use it.

Fees

Fees are accumulated at $400/hour of scanner time. This cost is discounted to $300/hour for Cancer Center members. Pilot imaging studies can be performed at little or no cost to generate images/data for grant preparation.

Contact

Chris Flask: flask@uhrad.com