HOUSTON, June 11, 2007 The Methodist Hospital, the University of Houston, and Weill Cornell Medical College of Cornell University are combining their expertise in biomedical imaging to advance discoveries in this growing field of biomedical science and its clinical applications.

The three institutions have jointly founded the Institute for Biomedical Imaging Science (IBIS). This Institute will create interdisciplinary programs in the sciences of biomedical imaging and will foster joint training programs to produce the next generation of basic and applied scientists. Biomedical imaging includes magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), CAT scans and other high technologies ranging from molecular imaging to nanotechnology to computer science.

These techniques are used to observe the activities of organs, cells and molecules with the aim of better diagnosis and treatment of many disorders, including those caused by cancer, cardiac malfunction and neurological conditions.

IBIS will bring together a critical mass of scientists from the three partner institutions to work toward developing new technologies and toward improving and extending existing ones. The combined expertise is expected to speed such advances and to increase the likelihood of receiving major grants for research and training.

The possibilities for collaborative research by this consortium are endless, said Dr. King Li, the director of the IBIS and Chair of Radiology at the Methodist Hospital. We hope to attract research grants that will lead to discoveries in new technologies and techniques to better unearth diseases at their earliest stages.

We are establishing a unique research environment, with as many as 50 scientists working together from the three institutions that already are aligned through academic affiliations, said Ioannis Kakadiaris, chair of the IBIS steering committee and director of the Division of Bioimaging and Biocomputation at
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Contact: Lisa Merkl
lkmerkl@uh.edu
713-743-8192
University of Houston
11-Jun-2007