Laboratory of Neuro Imaging

Laboratory of Neuro Imaging
Name	Laboratory of Neuro Imaging
Formation	1986
Founder	David Van Essen
Headquarters	Los Angeles, California
Parent organization	David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA

Laboratory of Neuro Imaging is a biomedical research center specializing in neuroimaging, neuroinformatics, and large-scale brain mapping. It operates within an academic medical environment and collaborates with international consortia to develop imaging pipelines, databases, and analytic tools. The laboratory contributes to studies spanning neurodegenerative disorders, psychiatric conditions, and developmental neuroscience and interacts with major funding agencies and publishers.

History

The laboratory traces origins to neuroanatomical mapping efforts led by founders associated with David Van Essen, with institutional ties to University of California, Los Angeles, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and earlier collaborations with investigators from Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Stanford University. Early projects intersected with initiatives funded by the National Institutes of Health, including units funded through the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institute on Aging. Over time the laboratory formed partnerships with international initiatives such as the Human Connectome Project, the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative, and the ENIGMA Consortium, while engaging with imaging centers like Massachusetts General Hospital and McGovern Institute for Brain Research collaborators from University College London and Karolinska Institutet. Leadership changes reflected broader shifts in neuroimaging toward multimodal magnetic resonance imaging pioneered at institutions such as Johns Hopkins University and University of Oxford.

Research and Projects

The laboratory conducts projects integrating magnetic resonance imaging technology developed at facilities like Siemens, GE Healthcare, and Philips Healthcare with analytic frameworks influenced by work at Allen Institute for Brain Science, Max Planck Society, and Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging. Research programs address biomarkers for Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, schizophrenia, autism spectrum disorder, and major depressive disorder and contribute to multicenter trials coordinated with organizations such as the Alzheimer's Association and the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research. Projects include atlas construction comparable to efforts by Human Brain Project and population imaging studies echoing design choices from the UK Biobank and the Framingham Heart Study. Methodological research relates to diffusion imaging advances tied to techniques developed at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and functional connectivity analyses inspired by work at Princeton University and Yale University.

Data Resources and Tools

The laboratory curates datasets and software that interface with platforms like Neuroimaging Informatics Technology Initiative, Brain Imaging Data Structure, and repositories modeled after OpenNeuro and Dryad. Tools released by the lab are used alongside packages from groups at University of California, Berkeley, University of Michigan, and Montreal Neurological Institute such as analytic suites developed in the spirit of FMRIB Software Library and AFNI. Data resources support secondary analyses by researchers at Columbia University, New York University, University of Pennsylvania, and Duke University and are archived with practices similar to those used by European Bioinformatics Institute and DataCite. The laboratory’s pipelines enable harmonization for consortia including ADNI, ENIGMA Consortium, and the Human Connectome Project, facilitating meta-analyses with groups at Imperial College London and ETH Zurich.

Clinical and Educational Activities

Clinical translational efforts align with departments at UCLA Health, integrating imaging protocols used in clinical trials run by sponsors such as Food and Drug Administration-regulated studies and pharmaceutical partners including Pfizer, Roche, and Biogen. Educational programs include workshops and training modeled after short courses at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and graduate curricula resonant with programs at University of Cambridge and University of Toronto. The laboratory hosts visiting scholars from institutions like University of Melbourne, Seoul National University, and Peking University and participates in conferences such as the Organization for Human Brain Mapping annual meeting, the Society for Neuroscience meeting, and the International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention.

Collaborations and Partnerships

The laboratory maintains partnerships with academic centers including University of Washington, University of California, San Francisco, and McGill University and industry collaborators ranging from imaging manufacturers to cloud providers similar to Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud. It is active in consortium-level governance alongside members of Human Connectome Project leadership, engages with standards bodies like International Organization for Standardization, and partners with philanthropic organizations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and disease-focused charities including Alzheimer's Research UK. Collaborative publications appear in journals such as Nature, Science, The Lancet, Neuron, and Nature Neuroscience with coauthors from Salk Institute for Biological Studies and Broad Institute.

Awards and Recognition

The laboratory and its investigators have received recognition from agencies and societies including National Academy of Sciences-affiliated awards, honors from the Radiological Society of North America, and distinctions linked to grants from the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health. Individual researchers associated with the lab have been invited to deliver named lectures at institutions such as Harvard Medical School, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and Stanford Medicine and have been cited in milestone reports by the BRAIN Initiative and policy reviews from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Category:Neuroimaging Category:Research institutes in California