This project is to develop, validate and commercialize a new magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technique, called intracellular sodium MRI or icsMRI. This technique is to non-invasively quantify the change of intracellular sodium concentration (ISC) in tumors and assess early response of cancer cells to therapies, initally  for brain tumors and then extending to breast and prostate cancers. The technique is completely non-invasive (no injection of contrast agents), non-radiative, and cost-effective (22 minutes in total for the sodium MRI scans). It is applicable to clinical MRI scanners of multinuclear capability at 3T or higher.
This project is on-going in the Qian's Lab for MRI. 

This project is to develop, validate and commercialize a new MRI technique, called short-component T2* mapping (scT2*). It employs ultrashort echo time (UTE) proton (1H) imaging at 3T and acquires T2*-weighted images of articular cartilages in the knee joint at multiple TEs, inclusing a UTE (<1 ms). A bi-exponential cure fitting is used to extract the short T2* component from the T2*w images on a basis of pixel-by-pixel. This short-T2 component is corresponding to internal water molecules trapped within collagen fibrils in the cartilage and thus is specific and sensitive to collagen fiber disorgnization, one of the three early degenerative events occuring in the cartilages of the knee of early OA.
This project is on-going in Qian's Lab for MRI.

This project is to develop, validate and commercialize a UTE MR imaging technique that can produce high resoluton (up to 0.14mm in-plane) MRI images of cartilages in the knee joint at 3T.  The high-resolution UTE images can be used to non-invasively grading cartilage injuries under ICRS (International Cartilage Repaire Society) scale or the modified Outerbridge scale, without need of invasive arthroscopy.
This project is pending to start in Qian's Lab for MRI.

This project is to develop an algorithm for T1, T1rho, T2 or T2* mapping when motion of a target tissue appears between images. This motion-resistant mapping will be applicable to relaxation parameter estimate in the knee cartilage, brain parenchyma, and myocardial tissues.
This project is on-going in Qian's Lab for MRI.