brain imaging center Tour

Welcome to the UCI Brain Imaging Center (BIC), a world-class facility, where we do cutting-edge research using a state-of-the-art Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scanner. Learn who we are and what we do. On this virtual tour we will show you how we explore the living brain without fear of harming the individual.

Nearly 500 million people worldwide suffer from some type of mental illness. One of every four U.S. families has a loved one with a debilitating brain disorder. About two million people in the U.S. are severely disabled by schizophrenia, two to four million by Alzheimer's Disease, one to two million from Parkinson's Disease, eight to nine million suffer from depressive illnesses, and many millions more suffer from other brain diseases and disorders. The cost to society is $140 billion annually.

The key to understanding and treating brain disorders is to obtain accurate information showing how the brain functions. The dedicated faculty and staff at this facility use one of the highest resolution PET scanners in the world. It was acquired in 2004. Through the miracle of PET we are able to observe the living brain and to evaluate brain function without fear of harming the individual. The PET scanner functions as a camera, taking functional/metabolic pictures of the activity of the brain. The radioactive isotope which has been drawn to the region of interest in the brain functions as the film for the camera. The resulting scans enable us to locate and identify many brain diseases and disorders. This identification allows direct, efficient approaches to evaluate the effects of various therapies to treat brain disorders, which helps avoid costly trial and error approaches.

Physicians and therapists have many sophisticated medical tools to help them diagnose brain disorders and guide them in treatment. Medical tools used to image the brain fall into just three major categories:

• electrical activity
• anatomical structures of the brain (tools such as X-ray, Computerized Axial Tomography (CAT), Computerized Tomography (CT), and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)
• localized functional activity of the brain (tools such as PET, Single Photon Emission Computerized Tomography (SPECT), and functional MRI (fMRI)

These tools complement each other so that physicians or therapists can use more than one imaging technique for their patient.

A PET scan requires a delicate weaving of disciplines and logistics in the three major areas of activity. At the Brain Imaging Center the three areas are:

• radioisotope production and chemistry
• subject examination and scan
• data processing and evaluation

Currently the production of the most commonly used radioisotopes is handled by a private firm, PETNet.

There are three categories of subjects:

• Clinical
• Research
• Controls

The scan procedure for each subject is basically the same.

Since 1985, the Brain Imaging Center has scanned several thousand research and clinical subjects for the following diseases and disorders: Anxiety Disorders, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD), Autism, Brain Tumors, Child Development, Dementias, including Alzheimer's Disease and HIV-Associated Dementia Complex, Depression, Eating Disorders, Epilepsy, Head Trauma, Huntington's Chorea, Language and Stuttering, Legal Insanity (Forensic), Mental Retardation, Multiple Sclerosis, Near Drowning, Parkinson's Disease, Schizophrenia, Sleep Disorders, and Stroke.

University of California, Irvine • Irvine, CA 92697
(949) 824-5011
© 2005 The Regents of the University of California.
All Rights Reserved.

Comments & Questions: Privacy & Legal Notice
Copyright Inquiries