Human Imaging Center at Byers Hall

The mission of the Surbeck Laboratory for Advanced Imaging at Byers Hall at Mission Bay Campus is to create an optimal environment for creating and optimizing new imaging technologies for investigating disease, health, and treatment. The overall objective is to contribute to the understanding of normal physiology and to elucidate the underlying biological mechanisms of health and disease. Critical factors that can be investigated through imaging are disease progression, the biochemical basis of different diseases, and response to treatment by individual patients. Translating these factors into bioengineering developments involve the integration of the underlying principles of MR physics with the design of new algorithms for reconstruction, post-processing and quantitative interpretation of the resulting multi-dimensional and multi-faceted imaging data, as well as the development of innovative RF coils and coil arrays for high-field and metabolic imaging. These new imaging techniques are then applied in novel research studies of healthy volunteers and patients with a broad range of diseases.