Description

The team of Prof. Bastiaansen focuses on the development of fast and innovative MRI technologies for clinical MRI scanners. The SNSF Eccellenza funded project “Quantitative magnetic resonance biopsies: Exploiting signal profile asymmetries for next-generation biomarker mapping” is carried out in the Department of Diagnostic, Interventional and Pediatric Radiology and the Translational Imaging Center at the sitem-insel.

MRI can be used to identify disease biomarkers noninvasively, but this procedure is complex and the measurement times are long. Another limitation of current MRI techniques is that quantitative information is often confounded by the presence of multiple tissue compartments and by magnetic field inhomogeneities that induce signal asymmetries. We are interested to exploit these asymmetries to encode the underlying tissue structure, which enables 1) high resolution motion-robust water-fat signal separation and 2) frequency-resolved quantitative mapping. The novel imaging paradigm will enhance the capability of MRI to extract quantitative information on tissue function and anatomy, with solid prospect for the future replacement of invasive biopsies. The technology will be widely applicable but specifically targeted to provide information on the prognosis of heart failure and the staging of liver disease.

Our team consists of engineers, physicists, and life scientists and work in close collaboration with clinicians as well as scientists from industry. Students interested to work on MRI for their MSc thesis project are welcome to apply, we always have several exciting projects available.

https://qis-mri.unibe.ch/