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Research cores
Animal imaging and technology core
Core Director: Prof. Rolf Gruetter
The animal imaging and technology core of the CIBM focuses on developing imaging technologies, with a focus on magnetic resonance methods and instrumentation, and on animal imaging. It serves as a translational bridge of the developments in animal imaging to humans, and through the fact that all human MRI is from the same vendor at the CIBM, eventually to the CHUV and HUG cores.
The main research instrumentation at the EPFL site consists of
- 7 Tesla human scanner
- (680mm bore, actively shielded, with 2.2 m short bore)
- ramped to field in November 2006
- Status: Basic installation is completed, the system is being debugged.
- 14.1 Tesla rodent scanner (260mm bore)
- ramped to field in March 2007
- Status: Basic installation is completed, ongoing collaborations with biomedical researchers.
- animal PET camera (basic installation completed)
This instrumentation is supported by a loaner rodent MR scanner
- actively-shielded 9.4 Tesla (310 mm bore) on loan from Varian
- ramped to field in May 2005
- basic installation completed September 2005
- Status:
- completed: proton imaging and 1H (13C) basic spectroscopy installation,
- Ongoing: DTI, fMRI, ASL implementation
- Ongoing collaborations with biomedical researchers, funded in part extramurally
Laboratory infrastructure
- RF laboratory
- Neurochemistry laboratory
- Computer support
- Animal physiology
Initial results from collaborations and developments presented at international meetings are summarized here, including the first peer-reviewed papers.
Beyond collaborations with investigators from the founding institutions and elsewhere, the core is currently actively engaged in specific projects involving the other cores of CIBM, in particular synchrotron radiation imaging (phase contrast core), image processing methods (signal processing core) and the PET core.
The core has main activities on the EPFL site of the CIBM, but also is currently engaged on projects involving the HUG and CHUV MRI cores focusing on RF coil technology and (multi-nuclear) spectroscopy in humans. The core is further significantly engaged in collaborations with the Paul Scherrer Institute, through the phase contrast core and the Swiss DNP initiative, a collaborative project.
A strategic focus is to continue to integrate multi-disciplinary approaches to biomedical imaging, which is currently in implementation as a collaborative effort with the PET core, which includes a joint development project to combine PET and MR.
A major research effort in technology development will focus on the development of new detectors for MR (RF coils and ancillary developments) and PET (in collaboration with industry).
Lab Infrastructure: On-site RF laboratory. The goal of the laboratory is to provide RF expertise and multi-nuclear coil development CIBM MR (and PET) cores .
The Gruetter group (Laboratory for functional and metabolic imaging, LIFMET) is a part of the animal imaging and technology core. A full description of the group activities can be found here (site under construction).
Major research activities are in establishing metabolic and functional imaging correlates of brain activation and relative to neurodegenerative diseases, imaging the neurochemical profile and a focus on glucose-sensing in the brain (diabetes).
The infrastructure includes a neurochemistry lab, with capabilities for rapid extraction of tissue. The Neurochemistry lab focuses on tissue sample preparation for e.g. phase contrast core and ancillary development work for validating imaging contrast and/or measurements.
More informations coming soon ...