Advancing Molecular and Metabolic Magnetic Resonance Imaging

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Magnetic Resonance Imaging offers tremendous opportunities for advancing medical imaging research. Unlike most other medical imaging modalities, MRI can use a wide variety of contrast mechanisms, each of which provides unique information about not only anatomical structure, but also physiological function and biochemistry. The opportunities for using MRI techniques for molecular and metabolic imaging in particular have dramatically expanded with recent developments in both chemical shift imaging techniques and the advent of hyperpolarised metabolically MRI. All of these new MRI methods show extraordinary promise for improving the detection, and staging of critically important diseases; however, there are numerous technical obstacles that must be overcome before these methods can be translated into routine clinical use. These obstacles range from development of new hardware to address shortcomings in existing technology, through the need to create new image acquisition and reconstruction methods to image hyperpolarised contrast agents. Therefore, the objectives of the proposed research are as follows: 1. Develop enhanced molecular imaging methods for the evaluation of metabolic diseases 2. Develop novel hardware to enhance clinical MRI 3. Develop accelerated imaging techniques for metabolic imaging