Magnetic resonance imaging

Coordinator

Emma Muñoz-Moreno Head of core facility

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) allows for visualization of organs and tissue in a non-invasive way, as well as its characterization of their anatomical and functional properties. The IDIBAPS Magnetic Resonance Imaging Core Facility has two scanners for MR acquisition: a Siemens PRISMA 3Tesla MR scanner for research in humans and a 7 Tesla Bruker MR scanner for experimental research in small animal o tissue samples. Besides, the facility has an image laboratory with specific computer equipment and highly qualified staff specialized in research and development of analysis algorithms adapted to each project requirements. Together with image acquisition and analysis, the facility provides advisory service during the whole project: from project conception to the results discussion and interpretation.

The main objectives of this platform are the following:

To provide services related to medical imaging acquisition and analysis to researchers from IDIBAPS, other institutions and health-related industries.
To perform cutting-edge basic and clinical research based on multimodal medical imaging. It includes acquisition of structural, diffusion, functional and perfusion MRI and magnetic resonance spectroscopy, and processing algorithms for volumetric analysis, structural and functional brain connectivity analysis, task-activation, etc…
Development of project-specific processing algorithms to extract the information of interest from MRI acquisitions.
User training in state-of-the-art in magnetic resonance techniques to enable researchers to conduct clinical or preclinical MRI-based studies.
To complement this infrastructure, the platform includes an image analysis laboratory, with available workstations equipped with the most common MRI analysis software.