Piotr Kozlowski, D.Phil
Welcome to the website of the UBC Magnetic Resonance Imaging Research Centre!
Our Imaging Centre operates a 3.0T Philips MRI scanner (whole body) and a 7.0T Bruker MR scanner (30 cm bore) on a cost recovery basis. We offer reduced scan rates for pilot scanning to optimize researcher protocols and free scanning for technical development scans which expand the capacity of our MRs.
We have a very experienced staff comprising of a team of MR technologists, MR Physicists, a radiologist as well as an administrator. We take pride in providing a full range of research support for MR imaging and spectroscopy applications including protocol planning assistance, data collection and guidance with data analysis.
2020 has been a very eventful year for us. At the end of 2019, Dr. Alex MacKay retired from the position of the Centre’s Director after 17 very successful years at the helm, and I took over his responsibilities. Luckily, Alex remains a very active member of the MRI Centre, serving on the Core Group and Protocol Review committees, and sharing his knowledge and experience. As for most facilities, the MRI Centre has been significantly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Research curtailment at UBC caused significant decrease in the number scans, and as a result it was no longer sustainable for the Centre to operate two MRI human scanners. The older 3T Philips Achieva located at the Purdy Pavilion was decommissioned at the end of August, after 17 years of generating great MRI data for our users.
In late 2018, we installed a 3T Philips Elition MR in the Charles Fipke Integrated Neuroimaging Centre located in the basement of the Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health across from the Ruby North Lecture Theatre. The new MR is ‘loaded’ with state of the art features such as ‘multi-band excitation’ and ‘Compressed SENSE’. It will deliver images and spectra with better signal to noise and whole brain fMRI will be available at much faster frame rates.
Our 7T MR is located in the basement of the Life Sciences Centre. It underwent a major upgrade in 2012. Andrew Yung, the Centre’s Scientific Engineer, has done a superb job of optimizing this scanner for imaging and spectroscopy.
If you are interested in making use of MR for your research, or simply would like to know what can be done with state of the art MR technology, please look through our website. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.