Key Technology Developments

Changing Care and Diagnosis

More than 160 patents were filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in the past 10 years by CCIR faculty.

Changing Radiologic Imaging Worldwide

CWRU Center for Imaging Research (CCIR) has been a driver for recruitment of tenured faculty in the imaging, math, chemistry, physics, biomedical engineering and radiology departments. It helps recruit top graduate students, and biomedical engineering now has the university’s second-largest graduate program.

The most important measure of success, however, is the thousands of patients whose diagnoses and/or treatments have been made possible, more accurate, more comfortable, safer, or less expensive because of advancements developed at CCIR.

  • Alzheimer’s disease imaging agents
  • Cryo-imaging technology and equipment
  • Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) advances:
    • Fast, parallel imaging
    • Interventional MRI
    • Magnetic Resonance Fingerprinting (MRF)
    • ABSINTH fast signal acquisition
    • Quantitative MRI
    • Ultra-fast free breathing quantitative 3-D MRI
    • Real-time cardiac imaging using non-Cartesian GRAPPA
    • Combined MR Angiography and Perfusion (MRAP)
    • Magnetic Particle Imaging (MPI)
    • Low-cost Surface NMR Design
  • CT cardiac perfusion imaging
  • New Computer Aided Diagnosis technique for early lung cancer detection
  • Intravascular Optical Coherence Tomography Imaging of Coronary Arteries
  • Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scanner and software for myocardial blood flow measurement
  • Novel PET radiopharmaceutical for measuring glucose transport in vivo
  • Nanobubble ultrasound contrast agents for molecular imaging and early detection of ovarian cancer
  • Digital breast tomosynthesis
  • Elastography in Ultrasound to find and/or target breast cancerous lesions
  • Dual-Energy Subtraction Radiography for lung cancer and coronary artery screening
  • Novel nanomedicine platform technology for imaging and treating aggressive cancers
  • Biodegradable macromolecular MRI contrast agents for non-invasive assessment of therapeutic efficacy