When people go to an emergency room after being injured, suspicious images may show up on their imaging scans that are unrelated to their injuries but may be indicative of cancer. A team at Vanderbilt University Medical Center recently established a better process for ensuring these patients receive follow-up diagnostic care, an initiative that is already receiving national recognition.

Victoria Morgan, PhD, and Allen Timothy Newton, PhD, both biomedical engineers and faculty of the Department of Radiology and Radiological Sciences, have teamed up with Stephen Wilson, PhD, associate professor of Hearing and Speech Sciences, to offer brain function mapping services to Vanderbilt brain surgeons and their patients.

Two days after Vanderbilt Commodores women’s basketball guard Demi Washington completed her 10-day isolation for COVID-19, she underwent a cardiac magnetic resonance imaging test (MRI). It was an extra step that may have saved Washington’s life.

Images of cells and tissues are a critical part of biomedical research as they show which molecules or proteins are present and where these molecules are located in the tissue. Using increasingly sophisticated microscopes and imaging approaches, scientists can now look at more than 40 different molecules at once, an approach known as multi-plex imaging, where in the past they could only look at three or four molecules at a time.

Researchers in the Vanderbilt University Institute of Imaging Science (VUIIS) have received a $1 million grant from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to develop “deep tissue” imaging methods that can peer into the furthest corners of the body.

Changes in connectivity in the brain’s white matter may be a novel neuroimaging biomarker for assessing Alzheimer’s disease progression.

Specific regions of the thalamus — a central brain region — are smaller in adults with psychotic disorders and youth at risk for psychotic disorders and are associated with cognitive impairment.