BIOMED Seminar

Title:

Diffusion MRI in Ultra-high Field

Speaker: 

Hao Huang, PhD 

Research Associate Professor, Department of Radiology 

Faculty Director, Small Animal Imaging Facility 

Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia 

Perelman School of Medicine 

University of Pennsylvania

Details:

The volume of a mouse brain is approximately 3, 000 times smaller than that of a human brain. Revealing anatomical details of the small animal brain requires higher resolution (e.g., 0.1-0.2mm isotropic). Ultra-high field (UHF) (e.g., 7.0 Tesla, 9.4 Tesla, 11.7 Tesla, or even 17 Tesla) for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is needed for sufficient signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of animal diffusion MR images. The audience will understand current technical challenges and possible solutions of animal diffusion imaging at UHF. 

Several applications of animal diffusion imaging at UHF will be introduced. These applications include delineation of mouse embryo anatomical structures with high contrasts of diffusion tensor microimaging, microstructural measurement of animal brain cerebral cortex and white matter tracts, tractography of mouse brain white matter tracts, establishment of animal brain atlases and biomarker detection with diffusion MRI of animal model.

Biosketch:

Hao Huang, PhD, is an internationally recognized leader in pediatric neural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). He is known best for imaging brain development and has been interviewed by Science and Nature Medicine on this topic. 

Dr. Huang is on the Editorial Board of NeuroImage, a top journal in the neuroimaging field. He has published nearly 100 peer-reviewed articles in journals such as Nature, PNAS, Trends in Neurosciences, Molecular Psychiatry, Journal of Neuroscience, Cerebral Cortex and Annals of Neurology. Dr. Huang maintains a strong NIH funding track-record and supports a laboratory of 10 members.