Advanced Imaging Technologies Resource Group

The Advanced Imaging Technologies Resource Group works to advance Imaging Science to benefit Human Disease Studies. This includes everything from development of new techniques, to translation of existing techniques to improving quality, speed, information-content, applicability of existing methods. it requires expertise and research focus on various areas including: Basic Physics, Basic Engineering, Bioengineering, Initial patient testing, Clinical single & multi-site trials of new techniques, and Training.

Basic development => Translation => Optimization => Validation

To excel in imaging science in each of the three UCSF mission areas:

Scholarship: Publications, Grants, Patents, Conference presentations.
Training: Formal UCSF courses, informal training, CME courses, International Society (i.e. ISMRM) Educational courses.
Services: Support clinical patient studies, UCSF Committee service, Grant Reviews for NIH and other funding agencies.

The Key Missions of the Advanced Imaging Technologies Resource Group are to:

Be world leaders in cutting-edge imaging techniques for studying human disease,
Collaborate with RIGS to get these and other basic techniques into application studies for testing & optimization,
Work with clinical to translate the new techniques and to improve state-of-art methods, and
Train and educate personnel in advanced imaging techniques.

The research by the Advanced Imaging Technology Specialized Research Group (AIT-SRG) members encompasses a wide range of imaging technique development areas including ultra-high field human and animal MR, interventional MR, metabolic & molecular imaging, specialized pediatric (including neonatal and fetal) methods, angiography, ex vivo cell and tissue bioreactor studies, dynamic contrast enhanced (DCE) MR, diffusion imaging, hyperpolarized metabolic imaging, PET, SPECT, and new hardware & sequence development. This work is funded by a large number of grants in which advanced imaging technique development is the primary or a substantial focus. This SRG has focused considerable effort on expanding the department's portfolio of extramural funding beyond primarily disease-focused grants to include more imaging technique development focused projects as well. The imaging techniques developed by SRG members are being applied in a wide variety studies enabling new disease-focused research by other Research Interest Groups utilizing new high field human MR, hyperpolarized metabolic imaging and PET/SPECT technology development.