The purpose of the In Vivo NMR Research Center is the advancement of in vivo NMR technology, its applications to animal and human physiology, and, ultimately, its application in the clinical setting. The research of the NMR Center's staff is focused on new methods and original applications of functional magnetic resonance methods. The following methods are being developed or applied: flow imaging; imaging of capillary circulation; diffusion of water and metabolites in brain and muscle; imaging of oxygen consumption; imaging and spectroscopy of aerobic and anaerobic glucose metabolism; imaging of altered metabolism in the brain, such as the types of anomalies due to tumors, Alzheimer's disease, and multiple sclerosis; localized spectroscopy to follow metabolism and pharmacokinetics; rapid recording of solvent-suppressed 2D COSY spectra with quadrature detection (with Peter van Zijl, Ph.D., Georgetown Univ., and Annette van der Toorn, Ph.D.); localized spectroscopy with optimal pointspread function (with R. Mejia, Ph.D., NIDDK/NHLBI) ; localized 19 F-spectroscopy to measure aldose reductase activity in the eye (with Robert Balaban, Ph.D., Chief/Cardiac Energetics, IR/NHLBI; Peter Kador, M.D., LMOD/NEI; K. Karino, Ph.D., NEI; and K. Mori, Ph.D., NEI); development of the use of field gradients in high resolution NMR spectroscopy (with Peter van Zijl, Ph.D., Georgetown Univ.); development of multi-volume localized spectroscopy; and eddy current compensation on 2T and 4.7T CSI instruments.
