Biomedical & Molecular Imaging

Biomedical imaging is a dominant approach for discovery, diagnosis, and therapy in today’s biological and medical world. At UVa, an established biomedical imaging community has produced a remarkable string of innovations in magnetic resonance imaging, ultrasound imaging, and cellular imaging – including the fastest MR pulse sequences for abdominal and cardiac imaging, the smallest ultrasound devices, and the highest resolution 4-D imaging of the living cell cytoskeleton. The originator of magnetic resonance imaging recently won the Nobel Prize in Medicine, highlighting the fundamental impact of this technique.

This research group aims to improve the practice of medicine by introducing new technological capabilities that provide increasing amounts of functional information regarding the molecular and cellular determinants of disease, as well as more cost-effective diagnosis of anatomical pathologies such as small breast tumors. In cellular imaging, new optical advancements allow discovery of the fundamental molecular systems controlling cell behaviors such as adhesion, migration, and proliferation that play a central role in diseases ranging from cancer to atherosclerosis.

The biomedical imaging environment at UVa is enhanced by an outstanding consortium of clinical investigators in radiology and cardiology. The ability of students and faculty to perform bench-to-bedside research in medical imaging using multiple modalities is unsurpassed, and includes radionuclide imaging of cardiac tissue, ultrasound (echo) methods for cardiac perfusion assessment and drug delivery, lung airway imaging using hyperpolarized gas, and MRI imaging of perfusion and function in the beating heart.

Primary Faculty

Brent French: multi-modality imaging of cardiac structure, function and gene expression

Brian Helmke: quantitative 5-D fluorescence microscopy, image analysis of intracellular structure and signaling and extracellular matrix assembly, intranuclear imaging of transcription factors and transport

John Hossack: high frequency, high frame rate 2D/3D mouse heart imaging, breast cancer detection, prostate cancer detection, diagnostic transducer design (piezoelectric and silicon MEMS), finite element analysis of transducers, combined imaging/therapeutics using ultrasound

Kevin Janes: multicolor in situ imaging of signal-transduction and gene-regulatory networks

Craig Meyer: real-time cardiac MRI, coronary artery MRI, image reconstruction techniques

William Walker: advanced ultrasound beam forming, tissue elasticity imaging, low-cost ultrasonic imaging, aperture domain processing, angular scatter Imaging, signal processing

Affiliated Faculty

Scott Acton: biomedical image analysis

Stuart Berr: multimodality small animal imaging

Silvia Salinas Blemker: image-based modeling of the musculoskeletal system, dynamic imaging of musculoskeletal motion

James Brookeman: MR imaging using hyperpolarized helium-3 and xenon-129 gases to study lung function and organ perfusion, fast 3D brain MR imaging.

Frederick Epstein: cardiac MRI, myocardial function, myocardial perfusion

Alexander Klibanov:molecular imaging, targeted delivery of therapeutic and diagnostic imaging agents

John Mugler: hyperpolarized noble-gas MRI, high-resolution 3D MRI, pulse sequence optimization, functional lung imaging

Ammasi Periasamy: energy-based FLIM-FRET microscopy and spectroscopy

Brian Wamhoff

Mark Williams: detector development, digital radiography, nuclear medicine, small animal imaging, breast imaging