This award provides a substantial upgrade to Georgetown University's 3 Tesla Siemens MRI scanner, which supports the innovative neuroimaging research conducted by 37 researchers from 8 different institutions in the region including (Georgetown University, Catholic University, Children's National Medical Center, Gallaudet University, George Washington University, American University, National Rehabilitation Hospital, and the Veterans Administration). This upgrade will increase the quality of the images acquired and allow the researchers using this scanner to make use of the latest developments in MRI pulse sequences notably those developed for the Human Connectome Project, which will provide better temporal resolution for studies of brain function, better spatial resolution including greater precision with regards to subtle differences in axonal connectivity, and better estimation of metabolite concentration via magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS). These improvements will support not only the various researchers but also provide educational opportunities for high school, undergraduate, and graduate students from across the greater Washington, DC metro region that encompasses a diverse ethnic and socioeconomic population.
Researchers from 8 different institutions in the greater Washington, DC metro region conduct a wide variety of neuroimaging research using the Siemens Magnetom Tim 3T MRI scanner at Georgetown University. One area of research focuses on neurodevelopment with studies examining reward processing, executive function, autism, reading and math difficulties, and spatial and creative relational reasoning. Another area of research uses this scanner to better understand basic neurological processes related to visual attention, spatial/object-based selection, somatosensory learning and cross-modal integration, sensory cortical organization, and cross-modal plasticity in blind individuals. The Siemens Prisma upgrade significantly increases the capabilities of this facility by providing two new radio frequency head coils, a 32- and 64-channel, that greatly increase the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) as well as allow for greater scanning parallelization. With the boost in SNR afforded by this upgrade, investigators will have greater flexibility in their functional MRI paradigms with higher spatial and temporal resolution. In addition, the ability to use the Human Connectome Project pulse sequences will greatly improve the power to detect subtle neuroanatomic differences using voxel-based morphometry (VBM) and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI).
