Yale Announces New Biomedical Imaging Institute

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Yale School of Medicine (YSM) has announced the formation of the Yale Biomedical Imaging Institute, bringing together renowned experts in imaging technology, clinical translation, and data science from across the university. The institute—one of only a handful of such in the nation—will serve as a center of innovation and excellence in biomedical imaging, driving transformative advancements in both basic science and clinical translation to better understand human health and guide the treatment of disease.

Georges El Fakhri, PhD, Elizabeth Mears and House Jameson Professor of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging and professor of biomedical informatics and data science, has been appointed as the first director of the Yale Biomedical Imaging Institute. Other leaders of the institute include Chi Liu, PhD, and Dustin Scheinost, PhD, associate directors, biomedical imaging technologies; Xenophon Papademetris, PhD, associate director, biomedical imaging data sciences; and Kelly Cosgrove, PhD, associate director, biomedical imaging translation.

“We are incredibly excited to see the Yale Biomedical Imaging Institute come to fruition and look forward to seeing its positive impact across disciplines for years to come,” says El Fakhri.

The concept for the institute emerged from a year-long strategic planning effort initiated by YSM Dean Nancy J. Brown, MD, and led by El Fakhri; Liu, professor of radiology and biomedical imaging; and Douglas Rothman, PhD, professor of radiology and biomedical imaging and of biomedical engineering.

“Through more than 40 listening sessions with stakeholders from YSM, Yale School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and the Yale Faculty of Arts and Sciences, it became evident that Yale has a unique, multi-disciplinary, and multi-departmental faculty body that has great enthusiasm for the Yale Biomedical Imaging Institute,” says Liu.

The planning effort identified three primary areas of opportunity for the institute:

• Developing novel biomedical imaging technologies across a wide spectrum of modalities
• Translating discoveries to improve understanding of human health and guide diagnostics and therapies
• Leveraging artificial intelligence and data science in imaging to accelerate research in predicting, detecting, diagnosing, treating, and monitoring diseases

The Yale Biomedical Imaging Institute formalizes the relationship among several long-established centers and cores, including the Yale Positron Emission Tomography (PET) Center and the Yale Magnetic Resonance (MR) Research Center, as well as key areas of imaging informatics, data science, and image processing.

“There is an unparalleled opportunity at Yale to establish a world-class institute because there are existing strong groups and centers that are very accomplished. Many are among the world leaders in their respective areas,” says Brian Smith, MD, deputy dean for research (clinical and translational).

Deputy Dean for Basic Science Research Anthony Koleske, PhD, says, “The ability to probe physiological and biological pathways via multiple modalities simultaneously is far more comprehensive than what any modality can achieve on its own. This should create synergies between research groups and greatly expand the scale of what is achievable."

Collaboration across departments, centers, and modalities at the institute will advance a range of research and clinical areas and facilitate clinical trials that recruit subjects from around the world. Brain imaging in health and disease, an area in which YSM has been a world leader, will remain a major focus, and the institute will expand efforts in areas such as cancer, cardiovascular, and inflammation imaging. There is also considerable interest within the biomedical imaging community in exploring prodromal disease, when treatment is most likely to succeed.

“The Institute is the outcome of Yale’s pioneering investments in imaging technology starting in the 1980s,” says Rothman. “It recognizes that imaging is now a key component of translational and clinical research and will ensure Yale maintains a leadership role in these areas.”

Data science will be a critical component at the institute. Scientists will leverage artificial intelligence and deep learning to manage, characterize, and disseminate the vast amounts of data generated. The imaging cores maintain an extensive collection of data from decades of research and clinical evaluation, an asset few institutions can match. The data repositories will be available to Yale investigators and the broader scientific community interested in specific diseases or functions, as will computational tools developed at the institute.

The formation of the Yale Biomedical Imaging Institute represents a substantial investment by YSM and the university to support extensive renovations that will accommodate novel, high-field, high-resolution, and high-sensitivity PET and MR scanners not currently available at Yale.

These investments will position the institute to attract interdepartmental, multi-investigator federal, foundation, and philanthropic funding. Through training and funding, the institute will also support trailblazing exploratory investigations, early-career investigators, and students with the potential to transform the field of biomedical imaging.

“The whole point of bringing all these advanced imaging technologies together is to be able to probe smaller effects, earlier-stage diseases, and less pronounced variants of diseases as opposed to the often very advanced disease states,” El Fakhri says. “Part of the paradigm shift is to move from imaging disease to imaging health.”