Researchers

 Director: Dr. Bruce Rosen
 
The Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging is one of the world’s premier research centers devoted to development and application of advanced biomedical imaging technologies. Research at the Martinos covers all points on the biomedical imaging continuum: from fundamental physics and chemistry studies to engineering and hardware development, from translational research to clinical application. Leading experts in each of these areas call the center home, enabling cross-fertilization of ideas and a positive feedback loop that benefits the iterative development and validation of new technologies and techniques. 
 
The backbone of the Martinos Center is the Technology Core, comprising Imaging and Computational Core resources. The Imaging Cores include the MRI, magnetoencephalography (MEG) and Optical Imaging Cores with an extensive and expanding inventory of state-of-the-art imaging facilities and equipment, including related laboratories and testing rooms. The Computational Core oversees data processing, computational infrastructure, software and hardware issues.

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Director: Dr. Connie Lehman

The Mass General Breast Imaging Research Center (BIRC) was created to achieve major advancements in early detection, accurate diagnosis and effective treatment of breast cancer. To this end, it has built close relationships with technology partners including the MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Lab as well as internal Mass General Brigham entities such as the Data Science Office (DS) and enterprise medical imaging. Research initiatives include projects in advanced breast ultrasound, biopsy procedures, a tissue banking program and development of a large infrastructure to expand the center’s deep learning research applied to breast cancer risk assessment and screening. 

Co-directors: Dr. Michael Lu (Radiology), Dr. Tom Neilan (Cardiology), Dr. Ahmed Tawakol (Nuclear Cardiology)

The Cardiovascular Imaging Research Center (CIRC) is a joint radiology-cardiology research program dedicated to improving health and understanding disease using cardiovascular imaging. CIRC has led many advances in cardiovascular imaging over the past two decades, including landmark clinical trials of coronary CT, cardiac MRI and PET. Multicenter randomized clinical trials of cardiovascular imaging are CIRC’s area of excellence. The center serves as the Core Image Analysis laboratory for several very large multicenter trials, for example, while its machine learning program leverages expertise in clinical trials and access to large trial imaging databases.

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Director: Weissleder, Ralph, MD, PhD

The mission of the Center for Systems Biology (CSB) is to analyze how biological molecules, proteins and cells interact in human patients. Through a multidisciplinary approach that combines clinical insight with powerful analytical technologies, CSB faculty pursue systems-level research that is both fundamental to understandings of biology as well as directly applicable to the diagnosis and treatment of diseases. While its work is generalizable to a variety of diseases, the CSB has strengths in complex human conditions such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, inflammation, renal disease and reproductive biology.

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Director: Dr. Anthony Samir

The Center for Ultrasound Research & Translation (CURT) is a bench-to-bedside interdisciplinary research center that develops and translates innovative medical ultrasound technologies for the benefit of patients. The center’s research can be broadly conceptualized as falling into three overlapping domains: 1) the development of technologies that extend the reach of ultrasound in clinical medicine; 2) the development of technologies that extract novel biologically relevant information from ultrasound imagery; and 3) the translation of these technologies through clinically informed animal and human studies that systematically de-risk technology as part of the translational process.

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Director: Dr. Georges El Fakhri

The Gordon Center for Medical Imaging is a multidisciplinary research center dedicated to improving patient care by developing and promoting biomedical imaging. Its main activities include research, training and translation of innovative research into clinical applications. Examples of recent work include establishment of a research program inneuroimaging-genetics with the focus on investigating brain networks involved in neurodegenerative diseases during bothpreclinical and clinical phases; development of novel nanoscale bioimaging technologies for diagnosis and treatment of human disease using medical image/motion analysis and machine/deep learning to study the relationship between tissue structure and function from multimodal MRI.

The center is home to the Gordon PET Core, an FDA-registered PET drug manufacturer in operation for over 25 years. The PET Core has a rich history in providing radiopharmaceuticals to the Boston community and in providing investigators with the personnel, equipment and services needed to design and conduct research studies using PET. Services offered by the core include radioisotope production, radiopharmaceutical syntheses, quantitative imaging, data analysis and experimental design.

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Co-directors: Dr. Peter Caravan, Dr. John Chen

Founded in 2014, the Institute for Innovation in Imaging (i³) seeks to accelerate the translation of basic discoveries to the bedside for diagnostic probes and devices. It supports academic researchers in bridging the gap from pre-clinical innovation to first-in-human proof of concept, facilitates interactions with industry to utilize technology developed in the department and promote its commercialization, and has an educational mission to provide training and learning opportunities for its users. Research in the institute is focused on the development, application and early-stage clinical evaluation of new diagnostic technologies, ranging from devices to PET probes to contrast media.

The Institute for Innovation in Imaging (i3) Core strives to lower the burden of developing new imaging approaches for clinical use, to translate new imaging technologies into clinical use and provide access to innovative preclinical imaging tools and resources. In this capacity, the Core shepherds new technologies or imaging probes through pre-clinical translation, IND approval and first-in-human studies. The majority of users rely on the Core to access unique instrumentation, use novel tracers in their research, develop new imaging approaches and translate pre-clinical research to first-in-human studies.

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Director: Dr. Jagpreet Chhatwal

The Institute for Technology Assessment’s (ITA) provides the infrastructure and expertise to evaluate diagnostic and therapeutic medical technologies at all stages of development, thereby promoting optimal use of increasingly limited health care resources. Its primary activities are developing and applying rigorous scientific methodologies, including clinical epidemiology, cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness analysis, health state preference and health-related quality of life methodology, decision analysis and health economics. From a historical and content perspective, the departmental home has been and remains in the Mass General Department of Radiology. However, the ITA is now recognized as an institutional program and has important connections to many departments and programs throughout Mass General.

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Director: Dr. Keith Dreyer

The Mass General Brigham Data Science Office (DSO) – originally the Center for Clinical Data Science – was established to enable the development of artificial intelligence and advanced data science techniques to solve problems in healthcare delivery and operations. The DSO is the bridge between academic research and development, productization, validation and translation to clinical practice. Engaging with key stakeholders, both internally and externally, the DSO supports the entire artificial intelligence lifecycle within an academic medical center: research, education, model development, clinical validation and deployment, governance and long-term maintenance and support.

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Director: Dr. Eng H. Lo; Associate Director: Dr. Ken Arai

The overall mission of the Neuroprotection Research Laboratories (NPRL) is to use a combination of molecular biology, cell biology, physiology, pharmacology and imaging to investigate mechanisms and targets in cerebrovascular disease, brain trauma and neurodegeneration. The NPRL’s research focus is closely aligned with and complements that of the Neurovascular Research Center. The two centers closely interact and collaborate daily, particularly on stroke pathophysiology and treatment, and have published together and secured joint funding.

Director: Dr. Cenk Ayata

The Neurovascular Research Center (NVRC) was founded in the mid-1990s and has since grown to become a leading research center in migraine and stroke. Its broad-based neurovascular program investigates the pathophysiology of migraine and stroke in search of novel therapeutics. The center is known for its cutting-edge in vivo disease modeling, physiological and pharmacological tools and translational track record in ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke and migraine. The research focus of the NVRC is closely aligned with and complements that of the Neuroprotection Laboratory. The two centers closely interact and collaborate daily, particularly on stroke pathophysiology and treatment, and have published together and secured joint funding.

Director: Dr. Gordon J. Harris

The MGH Radiology Computer-Aided Diagnostics Laboratory (Rad CADx Lab) focuses on validation and development of advanced imaging and visualization technology to improve the patient experience and enhance clinical efficacy of 3D imaging. It develops automated and semi-automated programs, such as those for CAD for CT colonography, and for semi-automated 3D segmentation to calculate tumor volume, which can be helpful in staging and treatment planning for brain or liver cancer or to track volume changes in patients with neurofibromatosis. In recent years, the lab’s projects have shifted from algorithmic to machine learning approaches to image analysis.

The lab is home to the Tumor Imaging Metrics Core (TIMC). The TIMC provides standardized longitudinal radiological measurements for 1,500 clinical trials and 11,000 patient visits per year for the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center (DF/HCC), a cancer research consortium involving the five principal Harvard teaching hospitals, the Harvard Medical School and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.