Center for Advanced Imaging Innovation and Research (CAI2R)

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DESCRIPTION: The Center for Advanced Imaging Innovation and Research (CAI2R) combines three areas of novel and high-impact imaging technology development with a unique new model for interdepartmental and academic-industrial collaboration aimed at translating that technology rapidly and effectively into clinical practice. The technologies to be developed center around a new paradigm of rapid, continuous, and comprehensive data acquisition, together with flexible image reconstruction, which will affect and connect multiple imaging modalities, including magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and Positron Emission Tomography (PET). Technology Research and Development (TR&D) project #1 aims at a new use of time in imaging, deploying leading-edge methods of rapid image acquisition and advanced image reconstruction to replace traditional complex, targeted, and inefficient imaging protocols with simple, comprehensive, volumetric acquisitions that contain rich information about multiple complementary contrasts and diverse dynamics. TR&D #2 envisions new and improved uses for radiofrequency (RF) fields, providing new tools for RF design, safety and control in MRI, and expanding the reach of the rapid continuous acquisition approach developed in TR&D #1 to high-performance high-field applications. TR&D #3 is addressed at new uses of simultaneity, advancing the fundamental capabilities of MR and PET through synergistic simultaneous acquisition and joint reconstruction. Our Center has a unique and explicit translational focus, which is reflected in the day-to-day operation of TR&D projects as well as in the topics of Collaborative Projects (CPs) and Service Projects (SPs), which are focused on three general areas of high public health impact: cancer, musculoskeletal disease, and neurologic disease. In keeping with this translational emphasis, CAI2R is also be driven by a novel collaboration model in which basic scientists, clinicians, and industry developers sit down together regularly at the scanners and in reading rooms for interactive technology development and assessment. This interdisciplinary collaboration model also informs our Training activities, many of which are addressed at the formation and operation of successful translational research teams. Meanwhile, with early involvement of clinical stakeholders and industry partners, we aim to make CAI2R technologies widely available for clinical and research use. Our broadest goal in CAI2R is to change the paradigms of data acquisition, image reconstruction, and day-to-day scanning for MR and PET, for the advancement of biomedical knowledge and for the benefit of patients and the physicians who care for them.