MGH Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging 2016 | Page 4

Message From The Director

Bruce Rosen on the state of the MGH Martinos Center
I am delighted to report here on the activities of the MGH / HST Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging. Center investigators and research staff were, as always, highly productive this past year. They continued to advance the state of the art in biomedical imaging, while also applying these innovative technologies to enhance our understandings of how the brain and the body work— knowledge that will no doubt lead to important improvements in healthcare over the coming years, but starting today.
This year is a bit of a milestone for the Center. Nov. 1, 2016, marked the 25th anniversary of the publication of the seminal Science paper introducing functional MRI( fMRI) to the world. Here, the Center’ s Jack Belliveau and colleagues reported the first demonstration of the technique, showing the imaging of brain activity in response to a visual stimulus— the iconic cover of Science magazine with this first fMRI image declared to the world that MRI was to be THE tool to study the human brain. The following June, in a seminal and groundbreaking paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the Center’ s Ken Kwong showed how to measure brain activity with fMRI based on naturally occurring contrast in the brain— instead of the injected contrast used in Jack’ s study. Together, the two studies inspired a revolution in neuroimaging, leading to unprecedented insights into the workings of the brain.
We have been celebrating this milestone over the past several months, with a series of events leading up to the fMRI25 symposium and reception on December 6.( You can read about these, and also find a handful of essays about the history of the technique, on the website www. fmri25. org.) But as much as we’ ve enjoyed looking back on the tremendous advances over the past quarter century, we’ re even more excited about what’ s ahead. In the following pages, you’ ll find reports of some of the cutting-edge fMRI work under way in the Center right now— including, among other studies, explorations of the brain mechanisms implicated in opioid addiction and susceptibility to peer pressure in marijuana users, topics of great current societal interest.
Of course, functional MRI isn’ t the only imaging technique that Center researchers are developing and applying. Other modalities include diffusion, perfusion and high-speed MRI methods; positron emission tomography( PET) and simultaneous PET-MR; optical imaging techniques; and MEG-EEG.
The report you’ re now reading is divided into three sections:“ Advances in Imaging Technology,”“ Focus on Clinical Applications” and“ New Insights Into the Brain.” Each of these highlights work undertaken in the Martinos Center in the past year. You’ ll note that there’ s some overlap between the sections— technology advances will have clear clinical benefits, and advances in understanding the brain teach us how to study other critical organs like the heart. This is as it should be. Research in the Center— indeed, across the biomedical imaging endeavor— is never about just one of these; it always takes into account the whole picture. In the following pages you can learn more about how our scientists do their remarkable work.
Bruce Rosen, Director Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging