INI Hosts First Annual SoCal Hi-Lo MR Imaging Workshop

For the first time, the INI has convened the research and clinical imaging communities of Southern California for an impactful annual workshop on high- and low-field Magnetic Resonance Imaging technologies. On October 12, the group convened on the USC Health Sciences Campus for a day of tours, tutorials and presentations that connected researchers from across the region and stimulated new lines of inquiry as well as novel research partnerships.

Danny JJ Wang, PhD, professor of neurology, director of imaging technology of innovation at INI and co-organizer of the workshop, started the day by welcoming guests to the institute and sharing a brief history of the INI and the Laboratory of Neuro Imaging Resource (LONIR), a platform for collaborative research in the neurosciences. Later, Wang led a tour of the institute and its Center for Image Acquisition (CIA), which houses both an ultra-high-field (UHF) 7-Tesla Siemens Terra MRI system and a 3-Tesla Siemens Prisma MRI system.

Presentations throughout the day included an in-depth discussion of high-performance-low-field (HPLF) MRI at USC by workshop co-organizer Krishna Nayak, PhD, a professor of electrical engineering at the Viterbi School of Engineering with joint appointments in radiology and biomedical engineering. Other topics, including clinical and research applications of UHF MRI, vascular imaging with UHF MRI, UHF coil developments, cardiac intervention and lung imaging with HPLF MRI, and more were also featured.

The event was sponsored by the Laboratory of Neuro Imaging Resource, the Center for Image Acquisition, and Siemens Healthineers.