Welcome! This is the homepage of the recently-formed (2009) Diffusion Imaging Group (DIG) at the Danish Research Centre for Magnetic Resonance (DRCMR) headed by Tim B. Dyrby. The DRCMR is the research side of the MR Department at the Copenhagen University Hospital - Hvidovre site.

A summary of the group's research activities is given below. For more details, use the links above and to the right to explore our site: discover who we are, what diffusion MRI actually is, and how our research can help the patients in our department's clinical section.

 

Our Objectives
The group aims for a basic-science understanding of the brain on several levels, ranging from isolated tissue compartments (cellular spaces, neuron, cell membranes) to visualisation and statistical analysis of whole brain connectivity networks. This knowledge is subsequently applied to clinical, pre-clinical and cognitive research projects as well as to clinical settings. To fulfil this aim, expert knowledge from a broad range of research areas is essential and is obtained through collaboration with colleagues within the DRCMR, external members, as well as international collaboration with other groups working on diffusion MRI, scientific computing and neuroanatomy.

DIG is closely linked to several other research groups at DRCMR:

  • Aging
  • Brain plasticity
  • Multiple-sclerosis
  • Brain Maturation
  • Preclinical
  • Clinical (scanning and diagnosis service for patients)

 

Overall research areas

  • Understanding of water diffusion in individual isolated tissue compartments such as cellular spaces, neurons, cell membranes (pre-clinical)
  • Active Imaging of tissue microstructure – Verification and validation of new optimised diffusion MRI protocols to probe specific tissue microstructures (clinical, pre-clinical)
  • Imaging pipelines for high-quality and high-resolution (ex vivo) diffusion MRI for studying tissue microstructure, method development and validation (pre-clinical)
  • Tractography and mapping of brain connectivity – improve and extend existing approaches and relate to functional data (fMRI, transcranial magnetic stimulation).
  • Brain plasticity including diseases such as multiple-sclerosis and dementia (clinical and pre-clinical), brain maturation (pre-clinical), aging (clinical), and sensory deprivation such as blindness and deafness (clinical)
  • Mapping spinal cord functional anatomy. Combining diffusion MRI measurements in vivo/ex vivo with morphology from conventional spinal cord MRI and functional clinical and experimental methods (clinical and pre-clinical).

 

Resources

The DIG has access to the following large-scale resources:


MR scanner facilities: 

  • A pre-clinical 4.7T Varian MR-scanner equipped with 4 channels (parallel imaging) and strong gradients ranging up to 400mT/m. A wide range of RF coils are available, and the facilities to ensure high quality in vivo as well as ex vivo pre-clinical MRI data.
  • Clinical 3T TRIO Siemens equipped with 8 channels, 40mT/m gradients
  • Clinical 3T VERIO Siemens equipped with 32 channels, whole body
  • Clinical 1.5T AVANTO Siemens equipped with 32 channels, whole body
  • (Upcoming - online in 2012) 7T human MR scanner for research 



Computing facilities:

  • High-performance Cluster (HPC), based at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU)
  • Terabytes of local data storage for processing the extremely large diffusion MRI datasets

 

Major Collaborations