New Haven, Conn. -- Yale will receive a $2 million High-End Instrumentation (HEI) grant from the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR) to fund the purchase of a 7-Tesla human magnetic resonance (MR) system that will facilitate ultra-high resolution studies of diabetes, epilepsy, psychiatric disease, and learning disorders.

Under this program, the NCRR makes one-time awards to support the purchase of sophisticated instruments costing more than $750,000 to advance biomedical research and increase knowledge of the underlying causes of human disease.

Led by Douglas L. Rothman, professor of diagnostic radiology and biomedical engineering, the MR system will be a shared resource for several investigators who are funded by the National Institutes of Health. Yale has recruited two new faculty members, Professors Hoby Hetherington and Jullie Pan, to develop new methods of biochemical image-guided neurosurgery using the system.

"The new 7T system will provide Yale scientists with the capability of imaging biochemistry and functional activity of the brain and limbs at unprecedented levels of spatial resolution," said Rothman. "The research will be unique among ultra-high field MR systems in its focus on developing and applying MR biochemical imaging for the understanding, diagnosis and treatment of disease."

"The High-End Instrumentation program provides numerous investigators access to essential equipment, often benefiting entire research communities and dramatically advancing their research projects," said Barbara M. Alving, M.D., acting director of NCRR. "These awards spur the kind of scientific discoveries necessary for the development of treatments for a broad spectrum of diseases."

The Yale School of Medicine will support approximately half of the system cost, as well as the cost of installation in the recently constructed 30,000-square-foot Magnetic Resonance Research Center in the Anlyan Center.
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Contact: Janet Rettig Emanuel
janet.emanuel@yale.edu
203-432-2157
Yale University
18-Aug-2006