Our projects aim at developing new and improved ways of imaging the human body and of diagnosing diseases, some of them involve Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), others involve ultrasound physics, or Positron Emission Tomography (PET), or combinations of them.
Our main current projects involve:
- developing novel hybrid ultrasound + MRI imaging methods whereby ultrasound and MRI signals, and at times even CT and PET signals, are combined to generate better/faster images, through the use of sensors
- performing diffusion MRI faster and with better geometrical fidelity than otherwise available, in the brain, optical nerve and prostate
- rapidly obtaining full-brain quantitative maps, in 3D, for all of the main physical parameters at the basis of MRI contrast (T1, T2, T2*, M0, B0 and B1+), through the use of multi-pathway mutli-echo (MPME) acquisitions and contrast translation with machine learning
- helping to explain discrepancies between ultrasound and MR elastography results caused by dispersion effects
The ALMA lab has close links with other labs both in terms of projects and personnel. These other labs include the Brain Imaging and Analysis Center (BIAC) at Duke University, the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the National Sun Yat-sen University in Taiwan, Radiation Oncology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, the National Center for Image Guided Therapy (NCIGT), and the Surgical Planning Laboratory (SPL).