The purpose of this Core is to provide the high degree of technical expertise required to perform and nterpret advanced MR imaging studies, to facilitate the collection of image guided surgical specimens and to relate the quantitative information derived from the imaging data to molecular markers of the biological properties of the tissue. It should be stressed that the many of the procedures required to achieve this objective are non-standard, requiring specialized knowledge, cutting edge equipment and sophisticated experimental or computer analysis in order to extract the information necessary for testing the hypotheses associated with each of the Scientific Projects. The decision to create a single Core that would integrate the maging and tissue analysis reflects the high priority placed upon acquiring image guided samples that can provide a direct link between the parameters extracted from the non-invasive metabolic and physiologic maging data and the ex vivo markers of biological behavior. The first function of the Core is to ensure that the clinical and research MR scanners at UCSF that will be used for the patient studies have the necessary pulse sequences, radiofrequency coils and analysissoftware to routinely acquire reliable and reproducible imaging data. It will also define the most appropriate imaging protocols for each of the Projects and provide radiological expertise for consistent interpretation of the data. A key component of the study is the quantitative analysis of the imaging data. The Core will contribute to this by making available specialized post-processing software packages for registration of MR and CT images, generation of maps of relevant metabolic and physiologic parameters, as well as software tools for visualization and quantitative analysis. To facilitate the interpretation of the data it will maintain a database of parameters extracted from the imaging data that is linked to the relevant clinical endpoints. The Core will be responsible for all aspects of the acquisition and processing of image guided tissue samples. This will include ensuring that they are processed and archived correctly, as well as performing the molecular and morphological analysis with immunohistochemical techniques. It will provide the expertise in pathology for interpretation of the processed tissue sections and extraction of appropriate quantitative parameters or ordinal scores. For correlation with the MR parameters and clinical endpoints the staff in the Core will maintain a tissue inventory and database of associated molecular parameters that can be linked to the clinical and imaging databases. Finally the Core will provide consistent oversight that will ensure the stringent compliance with regulations governing informed consent and patient confidentiality, as well as management of the images and specimens.
Showing the most recent 10 out of 75 publications
