Radiology and Radiological Science

Our mission is to explore and investigate all the various aspects of magnetic resonance (MR) research in medicine. We serve as a research resource for members of the Department of Radiology, the Johns Hopkins Hospital and the community. We invite and encourage research innovation, as well as collaboration at the local, national and international level, and work to provide state-of-the-art technology to researchers and clinicians.

The division’s focus is the development of novel MR methods and their application in biomedicine.

The Division of MR Research includes faculty, staff, and technical personnel, who provide research training, implementation and support for the mission of the Division.
Director, Peter B. Barker, D. Phil

MR Research Areas

Cardiac and Interventional MR

The Cardiac and Interventional MR section has projects to develop miniaturized MR detectors on guidewires for endoscopic MRI at ≤100μm resolution and precision-guided high-frequency intravascular ultrasound ablation. High-speed intravascular MRI methods for imaging vessel disease at ~10 fr/sec are being developed, along with precision MRI-guided interventional procedures that could treat obesity and cancer. Ongoing MR spectroscopy (MRS) studies of cardiac energetics in heart failure patients are underway in collaboration with investigators in the Division of Cardiology. 

Neuroscience

The Neuroscience section is focused on the development of novel MRI technologies and their application to basic science problems and clinical disease, especially in the brain. Methods have been and are being developed for (1) MRS and MRS imaging (MRSI); (2) diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and axonal mapping; (3) physiological imaging (blood flow, blood volume, and blood oxygenation); (4) Molecular imaging, especially the study of biochemicals and their interactions using magnetization transfer processes; (5) Magnetic susceptibility mapping and fiber tracking using susceptibility tensor information.

Several faculty members of this large section are engaged in the development of new technologies for high-field MRI, including novel biodegradable contrast agents (sugar and proteins), molecular imaging markers, and new endogenous contrast agents for distinguishing tumors from healthy tissue.

Cellular Imaging

The Cellular Imaging section is located in the Institute for Cell Engineering. We engineer cells so they can be detected with non-invasive imaging techniques such as magnetic resonance imaging and magnetic particle imaging. Our primary mission is to develop new magnetic tracers and cell labeling procedures to study the fate of therapeutic stem cells and immune cells after injection, also known as “cell tracking”.

We have been part of several clinical studies performed around the world, using cell labeling techniques developed in our lab. Targets of cell therapy include dysmyelination, multiple sclerosis, cancer, spinal cord injury, stroke, and diabetes. We use cell scaffolds and hydrogels to embed our cells for optimal survival post-transplantation and are able to visualize the biodegradation of these gels in vivo, with applications in regenerative medicine. Finally, we develop novel MRI contrast agents and theranostics with clinical applicability. These include both metallic (i.e. paramagnetic) and non-metallic (i.e. diaCEST) agents, and fluorinated tracers and capsules for 19F MRI and 19F iCEST MRI.

Neurofunction

Research in the Neurofunction section is focused on the development of novel MRI techniques to evaluate the brain's physiology, function, metabolism, and structure, as well as their clinical applications. Our work spans across humans to animal models and ranges from neonates to elderly individuals. Our central goal is to develop translatable MRI tools as candidate biomarkers in neurologic and psychiatric diseases.

Representative techniques that our team is actively developing include T2-Relaxation-Under-Spin-Tagging (TRUST) to measure oxygenation and oxidative metabolism, cerebrovascular reactivity (CVR) to evaluate the brain’s vascular reserve, water extraction with phase contrast arterial spin tagging (WEPCAST) for non-contrast assessment of BBB permeability, MR fingerprinting arterial spin labeling (MRF-ASL) for multi-parametric hemodynamic imaging, and brain atlases in special populations such as pediatric patients. Our team is looking forward to opportunities of collaboration and welcomes inquiries or requests of our techniques.

Neurometabolism

Research in the Neurometabolism section is focused on the development of novel MRS techniques to measure metabolite levels in the brain, as well as their neuroscience applications. Our work ranges from acquisition to analysis, and from neonates to elderly individuals. Our central goal is to develop tools that make MRS accessible to the non-expert user for applications in clinical and neuroscience applications.

We develop the open-source post-processing and modeling toolkit Osprey, which allows us to advance linear combination modeling of traditional MRS and MRSI data, as well as to develop analyses for the novel acquisition pulse sequence that our group develops. We pioneered the approach of Hadamard-encoded J-difference editing with the HERMES and HERCULES techniques, which allow edited detection of multiple metabolites in a single experiment. We are leading the application of our methods in the HEALthy Baby and Childhood Development (HBCD) study, a national longitudinal study of over 7,000 babies at 25 sites across the US. Our team is looking forward to opportunities of collaboration and welcomes inquiries or requests of our techniques.

MR Research Contact Information

The Division of MR Research occupies several thousand square feet of space in many different areas of the Johns Hopkins East Baltimore campus. Contact is best established with the specific Division member whose research endeavors and projects are most germane to your interests.

Johns Hopkins University
Department of Radiology
600 N. Wolf Street, Park 311
Baltimore, MD 21287

Phone: 410-955-6500
Fax: 410-614-1977