Welcome to the brain imaging center

UCI Brain Imaging Center (BIC) is a world-class facility, where we do cutting-edge research using a state-of-the-art Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scanner. The director Dr. Steven G. Potkin MD was recently featured in an Orange County Register article as the recipient of a $24.3 million grant to use interdisciplinary approach to research investigation. Because one in four families contains someone diagnosed with a debilitating brain disorder, it becomes imperative that physicians and researchers have effective tools for diagnosis, treatment evaluation, and understanding underlying mechanisms of brain pathology. PET is such a tool that provides a picture of the metabolic activity of the brain. Dynamic information about the working brain can mean the difference between ineffective costly trial-and-error treatment and successful outcomes.

BIC's High Resolution Research Tomograph (HRRT) offers the highest resolution PET images available (-2mm isotropic resolution). UCI's scanner is one of only thirteen in the world, and five in the U.S. It has more than 100,000 LSO detectors arranged in dual layers to enhance resolution throughout the entire brain image. This enhanced resolution allows movement, emotion, and reward circuits to be distinguished from each other. This is not possible with other scanners, including the newest PET-CT scanners.

UCI has its own cyclotron and radiochemistry production facility under the direction of Jogeshwar Mukherheee, PhD., providing UCI with unique imaging compounds only available at a handful of centers worldwide. Furthermore, the director Steven G. Potkin, MD has assembled a multidisciplinary team of physicians, biomedical engineers, psychologists, and computer programmers to continue to keep the facility at the forefront of the continuing advances in brain imaging methodology.

The UCI brain imaging Center's advanced cyber infrastructure for data analysis and image fusion, segmentation and neuroinformatics research is a key to its nationally recognized work. BIC is a leader in such federal initiatives as the Biomedical Informatics Research Network, the Transdisciplinary Imaging Genetics Center, and the National Alliance for Medical Image Computing and sponsors the annual International Imaging Genetics Symposium.

Relevant Links

• Transdisciplinary Imaging Genetics Center
• Biomedical Informatics Research Network
• Biomedical Informatics Tutorials

 

 

 

 

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